Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today The Number Had To Be 1776

July 4, 2014 fasab Factoids, Numbers 1776, Adam Smith, Adam Weishaupt, America, American colonies, American Continental Army, American Continental Navy, American Continentals, American friends, American gunboats, American navy, American Patriots, American Patriots Royal Navy, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, American Southwest, American submersible craft Turtle, americans, an independent nation, Andrew Doria, Arctic, Assembly of New Hampshire, Austria, Bahamas, battle, Battle of Harlem Heights, Battle of Long Island, Battle of Pell's Point, Battle of the Rice Boats, Battle of Trenton, Battle of White Plains, Bavaria, Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, bigamy, bird tail, Boston, Bowling Green, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, British, British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship HMS Eagle, British authority, British control, British fleet, British parliament, British Royal Navy, Brooklyn, California, Captain James Cook, Chatterton Hill, Cherokee, Cherokee Nation, cock tail, Col. Johann Rall, Committee of Five, common sense, Continental Army, Continental Congress, Continental Congress delegates, Continental Union Flag, crossed the Delaware River, Crown Prince Paul, customer, declaration of independence, Delaware General Assembly, Doncaster, Dorchester Heights, Duchess of Kingston, Dutch flag, education, Edward Gibbon, England, enlistment of free blacks, Entertainment, espionage, facts, fatal, Father Francisco Palou, first Europeans, first governor, first state constitution, first US fraternity, Fort Orange, Fort Washington, France, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, Francisco Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, French support, Gen George Washington, George III of Great Britain, George Mason, George Washington, Gregorian calendar, Guadeloupe, Haffner, Halifax Resolves, hanged, happy Fourth of July, Hessian mercenaries, Hessian troops, HMS Resolution, horse races, hurricane, Illuminati, independence day, independence from British rule, Ingolstadt, interrogation torture, invading spaceships, Jersey bank, Johannes de Graaff, Juan Bautista de Anza, Julian calendar, King George III, Kips Bay, Lake Champlain, leap year, Lee Resolution, Liberty Bell, Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, loyalist leaders, Lt Jose Joaquin Moraga, Manhattan, Marines, Marquis de Lafayette, Massachusetts, McKonkey's Ferry, MDCCLXXVI, Mission Dolores, Mission San Francisco de Asis, Monterey Presidio, Moore's Creek bridge, Mozart, Nassau, Nathan Hale, new york, New York City, New York Harbor, Norfolk, North Carolina, number, number factoid, numbers, Pacific Ocean, pamphlet, Patriot cannons, Patriot forces, patriot victory, peace conference, Phi Beta Kappa, Philadelphia, Plymouth, Presidio of San Francisco, Province of Georgia, published, rebels, renounce allegiance to King George III of Great Britain, Rhode Island, Richard Caswell, Richard Henry Lee, Roman numerals, Royal Colony of North Carolina, Royal Navy, Russia, Salzburg, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Savannah River, Scottish economist, Scottish North Carolina Loyalists, Second Continental Congress, Serenade No. 7, Significant Number Factoid Friday, significant numbers, Sir Guy Carleton, Sophie Marie Dorothea, South Carolina, Spaniards, spy, St Leger, State of North Carolina, Staten Island, successful assault, The American Crisis, The Bronx, The Crisis, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the Rockies, the Sierras, The Wealth of Nations, the world's first submarine attack, These are the times that try men's souls, third voyage, thirteen colonies, Thomas Paine, time bomb, Trenton, United States Declared Independence, Valcour Island, Virginia, Virginia Convention of Delegates, Virginia Declaration of Rights, vote for independence, Washington, Washington's troops, Württemberg, William & Mary College, William Howe, Wilmington

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Hello everyone.

And a very happy Fourth of July to everyone, particularly my American friends.

Independence Day again, and no sign of invading spaceships so I’m assuming its safe to do another number factoid.

And what else could it be today other than 1776, the year America became an independent nation.

Here we go.

Enjoy

And where else to start but with….

American Revolutionary War

On January 1^st, 1776 Gen George Washington hoisted the Continental Union Flag. The same day the town of Norfolk, Virginia, was destroyed by the combined actions of the British Royal Navy and occupying Patriot forces.
On Jan 5^th the Assembly of New Hampshire adopts its 1st state constitution.
On January 10^th Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense “written by an Englishman” in Philadelphia arguing for independence from British rule in what were then the Thirteen Colonies.

On Jan 16^th the Continental Congress approves enlistment of free blacks.
On February 27^th Scottish North Carolina Loyalists charge across Moore’s Creek bridge near Wilmington to attack what they mistakenly believed to be a small force of rebels. Several loyalist leaders are killed in the ensuing battle. The patriot victory virtually ended all British authority in the province.
On March 2^nd and 3^rd the American Continental Navy and Marines made a successful assault on Nassau, Bahamas, and in the Battle of the Rice Boats, American Patriots resisted the Royal Navy on the Savannah River effectively ending British control over the Province of Georgia.
On March 4^th American Patriots capture Dorchester Heights thereby dominating the port of Boston, Massachusetts. Threatened by the Patriot cannons on Dorchester Heights, the British evacuate Boston on March 17^th.
On April 12^th the Royal Colony of North Carolina produced the Halifax Resolves making it the first British colony officially to authorize its Continental Congress delegates to vote for independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
On May 4^th Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III of Great Britain.
On June 7^th Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed to the Second Continental Congress (meeting in Philadelphia) that “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
On June 11^th the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five to draft a Declaration of Independence.

On June 12^th the Virginia Declaration of Rights by George Mason was adopted by the Virginia Convention of Delegates and three days later on June 15^th the Delaware General Assembly voted to suspend government under the British Crown.
On July 2^nd the final (despite minor revisions) U.S. Declaration of Independence was written. The Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution.
And as we all know, on July 4^th the United States Declared Independence: The Continental Congress ratified the declaration by the United States of its independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
On July 8^th the Liberty Bell rang in Philadelphia for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence and the following day an angry mob in New York City toppled the equestrian statue of George III of Great Britain in Bowling Green.

On August 2^nd most of the American colonies ratify the Declaration of Independence.
On August 15^th the first Hessian troops land on Staten Island to join British forces.
On August 27^th in the Battle of Long Island, Washington’s troops were routed in Brooklyn by British under William Howe.
On September 1^st the Cherokee Nation was invaded by 6,000 patriot troops from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina begins. The troops destroyed thirty-six Cherokee towns.
On September 7^th saw the world’s first submarine attack when the American submersible craft Turtle attempted to attach a time bomb to the hull of British Admiral Richard Howe’s flagship HMS Eagle in New York Harbor.
On September 11^th an abortive peace conference took place between British and Americans on Staten Island.
On September 15^th British troops landed on Manhattan at Kips Bay.
On September 16^th in the Battle of Harlem Heights, the Continental Army under Washington are victorious against the British on Manhattan.
On September 22^nd the British hanged spy Nathan Hale in New York City for espionage.
The following month, on October 11^th on Lake Champlain near Valcour Island, a British fleet led by Sir Guy Carleton defeated 15 American gunboats commanded by Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Although nearly all of Arnold’s ships are destroyed, the two day-long battle gave Patriot forces enough time to prepare defenses of New York City.
On October 18^th in the Battle of Pell’s Point, forces of the American Continental Army resisted a British and Hessian force in The Bronx, whilst on October 28 in the Battle of White Plains, British forces attacked and captured Chatterton Hill from the Americans.
On October 26^th Benjamin Franklin departed from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

The last day of that month, October 31^st saw King George III make his first speech before British Parliament since the Declaration of Independence that summer, in which in perhaps the understatement of the year, told the British Parliament that all was not going well for Britain in the war with the United States.
On November 16^th Hessian mercenaries under Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen captured Fort Washington from the American Continentals. The captain of the American navy ship Andrew Doria fired a salute to the Dutch flag on Fort Orange and Johannes de Graaff answers with eleven gun shots.
On December 7^th the Marquis de Lafayette attempted to enter the American military as a major general.
And on December 21^st the Royal Colony of North Carolina reorganizes into the State of North Carolina after adopting its own constitution. Richard Caswell becomes the first governor of the newly formed state.
On December 23^rd Thomas Paine, living with Washington’s troops, began publishing The American Crisis, containing the stirring phrase, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
At Christmas 1776, Gen. George Washington ordered the first issue of The Crisis to be read to his troops on Christmas Eve, then at 6 p.m. all 2600 of them march to McKonkey’s Ferry, crossed the Delaware River and land on the Jersey bank at 3 a.m.
And finally December 26^th saw the Battle of Trenton, in which Washington’s troops surprised and defeated the 1500 Hessian troops under the command of Col. Johann Rall outside Trenton, taking 948 prisoners while suffering only 5 wounded.

In other things and other places in 1776

The year 1776 was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.
In Roman Numerals 1776 is written as MDCCLXXVI.
On January 2^nd Austria ended interrogation torture
On February 17^th Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his famous work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

On March 9^th Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in London.
On March 28^th Juan Bautista de Anza found the site for the Presidio of San Francisco.
On April 15^th the Duchess of Kingston was found guilty of bigamy.
On May 1^st Adam Weishaupt founded the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
On June 17^th Lt. Jose Joaquin Moraga leads a band of colonists from Monterey Presidio, landing on June 29^th and constructing the Mission Dolores of the new Presidio of San Francisco.
On July 12^th Captain James Cook sets off from Plymouth, England, in HMS Resolution on his third voyage, to the Pacific Ocean and Arctic, which would turn out to be fatal.

On July 21^st Mozart’s Serenade No. 7 (the “Haffner”) is first performed in Salzburg, Austria.
On July 29^th Francisco Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, and eight other Spaniards set out from Santa Fe on an eighteen-hundred mile trek through the American Southwest. They were the first Europeans to explore the vast region between the Rockies and the Sierras.
On September 6^th a hurricane hit Guadeloupe, killing more than 6000 people.
On September 24^th the first of the now very famous St Leger horse races were held at Doncaster, England.
On October 7^th Crown Prince Paul of Russia married Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg.
On October 9^th Father Francisco Palou founded the Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California.
On October 18^th in a New York bar decorated with a bird tail, a customer orders “cock tail”.
On December 5^th the first US fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa (William & Mary College), is formed.

The Standard Practice for Conditioning and Testing Textiles is Active Standard ASTM D1776
The Standard Specification for Eye Protective Devices for Paintball Sports is Active Standard ASTM F1776.
MTE M-1776 is a Surge Protective Device
P1776 is the code for solenoid stuck in low/reverse which is a fairly common problem and can be prevented most of the time by keeping the fluid clean.
The 1776 Premier Program offers a venue for highly-committed, elite players to receive professional, year-round coaching and to seek competition at the highest levels of US Youth Soccer.

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Did You Know? – Another Random Fact Feast!

September 10, 2013September 4, 2013 fasab Factoids 17th Century, 180th meridian, 1959, 1987, Aladdin, Alaska, alcoholic variation, Aleutian Islands, America, beer, boardgame, bodybuilders, Boston, Boxing Day, byte, C-3P0, Chinese, Chinese boy, Chinese Checkers, cigarettes, civilized world, computer, conserve gas, December 26th, Did You Know, easternmost, education, Entertainment, esophagus, fact, facts, gasoline rationing, gatorade, George Howard Monks, gray, Great Gettysburg Reunion of 1913, hair, hair color, hair follicle, Halma, hatchet, helicopter pilot, hip-shaking dance, Hop ’n Gator, horse, hotel, Hydrogen gas, ice, information, invented, Japanese, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Josh Muszynski, Kevin Peter Hall, launched, least dense substance, man-made satellite, Mechta, melanin, merengue, Misc, Miscellaneous, Moon, movie, natural rubber, new york, nibble, northernmost, orbit around the Sun, patent, peace, Pi, pigment cells, predator, primary source, producers, R2-D2, Raiders of the Lost Ark, rebuilt, regiments, Second World War, Southeast Asia, state, stomach, Super Bowl trophy, surgeon, Sweden, Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights, Tiffany & Co, tires, trivia, United States, USSR, value of pi, Visa, vomit, westernmost, whisking motion

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Random fact feast it is.

Another selection of hopefully interesting facts that you didn’t know you didn’t know.

Enjoy.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark there is a

wall carving of R2-D2 and C-3P0 behind the ark

Chinese Checkers is not Chinese.

It was created in America to circumvent the

patent for a popular boardgame called Halma,

invented by a Boston surgeon named George Howard Monks.

In the 17th century,

the value of pi was known to 35 decimal places.

Today, to 1.2411 trillion.

Technically speaking, Alaska is the northernmost,

westernmost, and easternmost state of the United States.

Parts of the Aleutian Islands cross over the 180th meridian.

The original story from “Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights” begins,

“Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.”

There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice;

it is rebuilt every year.

In 1959, the USSR launched a craft called the Mechta towards the Moon.

It missed, and instead became (inadvertently) the first

man-made satellite to go into orbit around the Sun.

It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years,

there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.

In the 1987 movie ‘Predator’, the character of the Predator

was originally set up for Jean-Claude Van Damme

to play a martial-arts fighting Predator.

However the producers realized much of the cast

were bodybuilders over 6 feet tall (and Van Damme was clearly smaller)

so they cast the enormous 7’ 21/2” Kevin Peter Hall

so that the Predator could realistically physically dominate

the film’s human characters.

Interestingly Hall also appears in the movie

as the helicopter pilot at the end.

Gatorade’s inventor later created an alcoholic variation,

Hop ’n Gator

— essentially, lemon lime Gatorade mixed with beer.

At the Great Gettysburg Reunion of 1913,

two men purchased a hatchet,

walked to the site where their regiments had fought,

and buried it.

Though it’s rarely used,

the word referring to half a computer byte

is a “nibble.”

Because of the angle at which its esophagus enters its stomach,

the horse is physically unable to vomit.

The reason why hair turns gray as we age

is because the pigment cells in the hair follicle start to die,

which is responsible for producing “melanin”

which gives the hair colour

Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world,

at 0.08988g/cc

The purpose of gasoline rationing during the Second World War

was not to conserve gas, but to conserve TIRES.

The primary source for natural rubber at the time was Southeast Asia,

much of which was under Japanese control.

The concept of Boxing Day, which is on December 26th,

was to give boxes of food and clothing to the poor.

It is now viewed in some countries as a time

to get merchandise from stores at reduced prices

Jewelers Tiffany & Co., based in New York, are responsible

for making the Super Bowl trophy

The world’s most expensive cigarettes.

In 2009, Josh Muszynski used his Visa to buy cigarettes.

Due to a Visa “glitch,” he was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

To be exact: $23,148,855,308,184,500

The popular hip-shaking dance, the merengue,

got its name from the whisking motion required to make meringue.

==================================

Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today The Number Is Twelve 12 (Part 1)

August 9, 2013August 9, 2013 fasab Cars, Factoids, Numbers, Politics, Sport 000, 12, 12 days of Christmas, 12 Great Feasts, 12 inches, 12 steps, 12th President of the United States of America, 144, 1812 overture, aerosol spray propellant, Alcoholics Anonymous, Aleksandr Blok, American football, Ancient Greek religion, ancient legislation, Apollo 12, Arthur, Asher, association football, Atlanta, Atlético Mineiro, atomic number, aviator, bat mitzvah, Battlestar Galactica, Bayern Munich, Beaufort wind force scale, Benjamin, BMW 5-Series, BMW E12, Bob Dylan, Bob Griese, Book of Revelation, books, Boston, British pound, Buffalo Bills, Canadian football, card deck, Celtic League, CFC, Chicago, chlorofluorocarbon halomethane, Christianity, Christmastide, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Cincinnati Royals, classical music, Cleveland, cobalamin, code name, Columbia, commercial broadcast satellite, congress, Cork City, courts, cranial nerves, cricket, cube, curling, Dallas, dallas cowboys, Dan, decimal currency, Detroit Red Wings, Dichlorodifluoromethane, Dick Barnett, Dickie Moore, digital telephone, dodecagon, dodecahedron, dodecapolis, Duodecim Tabulae, duodecimal system, duodenum, Earhart, Eastern Orthodoxy, education, Electoral College, Entertainment, Epiphany, Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, Etruscan League, factoid, federal, Federal Reserve Districts, felony trials, Ferrari F12 berlinetta, Feyenoord, FIFA Women's World Cup, Flag of Europe, Flamengo, Florida, foot, Force 12, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, French department Aveyron, Freon-12, Gad, government officials, Greek Mythology, Hall of Famer, Hammarby, Harshad number, hexadecimal, Hinduism, Hispano-Suiza J12, human body, hurricane, icosahedron, Imami, Islam, Israel, Issachar, Jacob, Jesus, Jim Kelly, Jimmie Mattern, Joe Namath, John Brodie, John Milton, John Stockton, Joseph, Judah, Judaism, Judas Iscariot, Jupiter, jurors, jury, Kansas City, Kennedy Space Center, King Arthur Legend, Levi, Lex Duodecim Tabularum, Lockheed 12, Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, Lysithea, magnesium, Majestic 12, Major League Baseball, mathematics, Matthias, Maurice Stokes, McLaren M12, Mesopotamia, Messier object M12, Miami Dolphins, military leaders, Milo Burcham, Minneapolis, Misc, Miscellaneous, MJ-12, Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Protocol, Moon, movies, music, Naphtali, Napier Lion, NBA, New General Catalogue object NGC 12, New Mexico, New Testament, new york, New York Jets, New York Knicks, NFL, NHL, Nick McDonell, Noble M12, Norse god, Northern Ireland, novel, number, numbers, octahedron, Odin, Ophiuchus, Orthodox Judaism, ozone layer, pantheon, Paradise Lost, PC keyboards, perfect number, periodic table, Philadelphia, Pisces, Pittsburgh Steelers, play, politics, Portsmouth, precious metals, President Harry S Truman, primary colors, Prophet Muhammad, Protestant, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Quorum, Qur'an, R-12, Random, refrigerant, Reginald Rose, religion, Renault 12, Reuben, ribs, Rich Text Format, Richmond, Roberto Alomar, Roger Staubach, Roman law, Roswell, Sacramento Kings, San Francisco, San Francisco 49ers, Saxon invaders, science, scientists, Seattle Seahawks, secondary colors, secret committee, Shia Islam, Shi‘ah, shillings, Shiva, Sid Abel, Significant Number, significant numbers, signs of the zodiac, Silly String, Simeon, soccer, space, Space Shuttle program, sport, Spyker E12, St. Louis, Stan Smyl, states, STS-12, sublime number, sun god Surya, Sunni, Super 12, Super Rugby, superfactorial, Sura, Sura Yusuf, Tampa Bay Rays, technology, telecommunications, television, Telstar 12, ten-pin bowling, Terry Bradshaw, tertiary colors, The Aeneid, The Beatles, the Bible, the Church, The Dirty Dozen, The Twelve, The Twilight Zone, the Virgin Mary, Toronto Blue Jays, transport, troy pound, tv, Twelfth Amendment, Twelfth Night, Twelfth of July, twelve, Twelve Angry Men, twelve apostles of Jesus, twelve function keys, twelve Imams, twelve labors of Hercules, Twelve Olympians, Twelve Tables, Twelve Tribes of Israel, Twelver, UFO, UFO conspiracy theory, Unionist, United States, United States Constitution, Utah Jazz, V12 engine, Vancouver Canucks, Vector M12, Virgil, Vitamin B12, Volkswagen Nardò, Volkswagen W12 Coupe, W12 engine, Wade Boggs, Washington DC, White House, William Shakespeare, world service, Yvan Cournoyer, Zachary Taylor, Zebulun

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Welcome to significant number factoid Friday.

Today the number is twelve and as usual it has a lot more associations that you might at first think. So many in fact that I have decided to split this post into two parts.

The second part (next Friday) will consist of the many entries in the ‘militaria’ section, while today’s will include the rest.

Even with the split it’s still a long post, but I hope those of you interested in numbers and their associations will enjoy reading it.

The Number Twelve 12

In religion

The number 12 is very important in many religions, mainly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also found in some other belief systems.
From the Bible we know that Jacob had 12 sons, (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin), who were the progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The New Testament describes twelve apostles of Jesus; after Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and hanged himself, a meeting was held (Acts) to add Matthias to complete the number twelve once more.
The Book of Revelation contains much numerical symbolism, and a lot of the numbers mentioned have 12 as a divisor.
Revelation 12:1 mentions a woman—interpreted as the people of Israel, the Church or the Virgin Mary—wearing a crown of twelve stars (representing each of the twelve tribes of Israel).
Also there are 12,000 people sealed from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, making a total of 144,000 (which is the square of 12 multiplied by a thousand).

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
In Orthodox Judaism, 12 signifies the age a girl matures (bat mitzvah)
There are 12 days of Christmas; the period of thirteen days including Epiphany is sometimes known as Christmastide, thus Twelfth Night is another name for the twelfth day of Christmas or January 5 (the eve of Epiphany).
Similarly, Eastern Orthodoxy observes 12 Great Feasts.
In Twelver (or Imami) Shi’a Islam, there are twelve Imams, successors of the prophet Muhammad. These twelve early leaders of Islam were—Ali, Hasan, Husayn, and nine of Husayn’s descendants. Imamah is the Shi‘ah doctrine of religious, spiritual and political leadership of the Ummah. The Shi‘ah believe that the A’immah (“Imams”) are the true Caliphs or rightful successors of Muhammad, and Twelver and Isma‘ili Shi‘ah further that Imams are possessed of supernatural knowledge, authority, and infallibility as well as being part of the Ahl al-Bayt, the family of Muhammad. Both beliefs distinguish the Shi‘ah from Sunnis.
In the Quran, the Sura number 12 is Sura Yusuf (Joseph), and it is located in Juz’a number 12. This Sura narrates the story of Prophet Yusuf and his 12 brothers.
In Hinduism, the sun god Surya has 12 names. Also, there are 12 Petals in Anahata (Heart Chakra. There are twelve “Jyotirlingas” in Hindu Shaivism. The Shaivites (orthodox devotees of God Shiva) treat them with great respect and they are visited by almost every pious Hindu at least once in a lifetime.

In antiquity there are numerous magical/religious uses of twelves.
Ancient Greek religion, the Twelve Olympians were the principal gods of the pantheon.
Greek mythology has the twelve labors of Hercules.
The chief Norse god, Odin, had 12 sons.
Several sets of twelve cities are identified in history as a dodecapolis, the most familiar being the Etruscan League.
In the King Arthur Legend, Arthur is said to have subdued 12 rebel princes and to have won 12 great battles against Saxon invaders.

In mathematics

Twelve is the smallest number with exactly six divisors, its divisors being 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12.
Twelve is a sublime number, a number that has a perfect number of divisors, and the sum of its divisors is also a perfect number.
Twelve is a superfactorial, being the product of the first three factorials.
The first four positive integers show up in the following equation 12 = 3 × 4, which can be continued with the equation 56 = 7 × 8.
A twelve-sided polygon is a dodecagon.
A twelve-faced polyhedron is a dodecahedron.

Regular cubes and octahedrons both have 12 edges, while regular icosahedrons have 12 vertices.
The duodecimal system (1210 [twelve] = 1012), which is the use of 12 as a division factor for many ancient and medieval weights and measures, including hours, probably originates from Mesopotamia.
In base thirteen and higher bases (such as hexadecimal), twelve is represented as C. In base 10, the number 12 is a Harshad number.

In science and technology

Twelve is the atomic number of magnesium in the periodic table.
The human body has twelve cranial nerves.
The duodenum (from Latin duodecim, “twelve”) is the first part of the small intestine, that is about twelve inches (30 cm) long. More precisely, this section of the intestine was measured not in inches but in fingerwidths. In fact, in German the name of the duodenum is Zwölffingerdarm and in Dutch the name is twaalfvingerige darm, both meaning “twelve-finger bowel”.
Vitamin B12, also called cobalamin, is a water-soluble vitamin with a key role in the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system, and for the formation of blood. It is one of the eight B vitamins. The vitamin is the largest and most structurally complicated vitamin and can be produced industrially only through bacterial fermentation-synthesis.
Dichlorodifluoromethane (R-12), a colorless gas usually sold under the brand name Freon-12, is a chlorofluorocarbon halomethane (CFC), used as a refrigerant and aerosol spray propellant. Complying with the Montreal Protocol, its manufacture was banned in the United States along with many other countries in 1996 due to concerns about damage to the ozone layer. It is soluble in many organic solvents. Dichlorodifluoromethane was also the main component of Silly String.

Force 12 on the Beaufort wind force scale corresponds to the maximum wind speed of a hurricane.
There are twelve function keys on most PC keyboards (F1 through F12)
There are twelve keys in any standard digital telephone (1 through 9, 0, * and #)
Microsoft’s Rich Text Format specification assigns numbers congruent to 12 mod 256 to variants of the French language.

In space

Messier object M12 is a magnitude 8.0 globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus.
The New General Catalogue object NGC 12 is a magnitude 13.1 spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces.
The 12th moon of Jupiter is Lysithea.
Twelve people have walked on Earth’s moon.
Telstar 12, is a commercial broadcast satellite used in telecommunications, operated by Loral Skynet. It is a Ku band satellite with coverage of North America as far West as Cleveland, Ohio, the majority of South America, Europe as far East as the United Arab Emirates and South Africa. Telstar 12 also has the capability to provide intercontinental connectivity including trans-Atlantic to the Mid-East.

Apollo 12
Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon (an H type mission).
It was launched on November 14, 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Mission commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms.
Unlike the first landing by Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location, the site of the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. They carried the first color television camera to the lunar surface on an Apollo flight, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally destroyed the camera by pointing it at the Sun. On one of two moonwalks, they visited the Surveyor, and removed some parts for return to Earth.
The mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.

STS-12
During the Space Shuttle program, several missions were cancelled. Many were cancelled as a result of the Challenger and the Columbia disasters. Many early missions were cancelled due to delays in the development of the shuttle. Others were cancelled because of changes in payload and missions requirements.
STS-12 was originally scheduled for launch on 30 January 1981. The crew of three were to place the satellites TDRS-C and Anik-C2 into orbit during the 2-day mission. An alternate mission was also planned which replaced the TDRS-C with an Intelsat-V satellite, and would last five days instead of two. TDRS-C was eventually made as the replacement for the destroyed TDRS-B and launched from Discovery on STS-26 in September 1988.
The crew of STS-12 were, Henry W. Hartsfield, Jr. (Commander); Michael L. Coats (Pilot); and Mission Specialists Richard M. Mullane, Steven A. Hawley and Judith A. Resnik.

Majestic 12
According to UFO conspiracy theory, Majestic 12 (or MJ-12) is the supposed code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. The purpose of the committee was to investigate the recovery of a UFO north of Roswell, New Mexico during July 1947.
Initial indications of such a group’s existence appeared in 1978 in declassified Canadian documents. Another reference to a classified group called “MJ-12” was discovered in 1980, but was later identified to be a hoax. In 1984 a set of documents was discovered in United States archives, which closely resemble real declassified documents, but which the FBI have declared to be “completely bogus”.
UFO conspiracy theories and the popular media based on them sometimes incorporate Majestic 12.

In politics

The 12th President of the United States of America (1849–1850) was Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850). An American military leader, his 40-year military career ended with far-reaching victories in the Mexican–American War. His status as a national hero won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died 16 months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress.

The Twelfth Amendment (Amendment XII) to the United States Constitution provides the procedure for electing the President and Vice President. It replaced Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, which provided the original procedure by which the Electoral College functioned. Problems with the original procedure arose in the elections of 1796 and 1800. The Twelfth Amendment was proposed by the Congress on December 9, 1803, and was ratified by the required number of state legislatures on June 15, 1804.
The United States of America is divided into twelve Federal Reserve Districts (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco); American paper currency has serial numbers beginning with one of twelve different letters, A through L, representing the Federal Reserve Bank from which the currency originated.

There are 12 stars are featured on the Flag of Europe

The French department Aveyron is number twelve.
In Northern Ireland the Twelfth of July is the main day of celebration and commemoration for the Protestant and Unionist community, and a public holiday.

In sport

The competition that was founded in 2001 as the Celtic League changed its name in 2011 to Pro12, reflecting its status as a 12-team league after it expanded in 2010 to include teams from Italy.
The Southern Hemisphere competition now known as Super Rugby was known from 1996 through 2005, an era in which it had 12 teams, as Super 12.
In both soccer and American football, the number 12 can be a symbolic reference to the fans because of the support they give to the 11 players on the field.
Texas A&M University reserves the number 12 jersey for a walk-on player who represents the original “12th Man”, a fan who was asked to play when the team’s reserves were low in a college American football game in 1922.
Bayern Munich, Hammarby, Feyenoord, Atlético Mineiro, Flamengo, Seattle Seahawks, Portsmouth and Cork City do not allow field players to wear the number 12 on their jersey because it is reserved for their supporters.
The jersey number 12 has been retired by several North American sports teams in honor of past playing greats (or, in one case, a team’s fans):
In Major League Baseball: the Tampa Bay Rays, for Hall of Famer Wade Boggs; the Toronto Blue Jays, for Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar.

In the NFL: the Buffalo Bills, for Hall of Famer Jim Kelly; the Miami Dolphins, for Hall of Famer Bob Griese; the New York Jets, for Hall of Famer Joe Namath; the San Francisco 49ers, for John Brodie; the Seattle Seahawks, for their fans (the “12th Man”); the Dallas Cowboys have a policy of not retiring numbers, however, the team has not issued #12 since the retirement of Hall of Famer Roger Staubach; the Pittsburgh Steelers currently have a policy of not retiring numbers, having retired only one number (70) in their earlier history, however, the Steelers have not issued #12 since the retirement of Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw.

In the NBA: the New York Knicks, for Dick Barnett; the Utah Jazz, for Hall of Famer John Stockton; the Cincinnati Royals, for Hall of Famer Maurice Stokes, who suffered a career-ending head injury in 1958, the team’s first season in Cincinnati and the franchise continues to honor the number in its current incarnation as the Sacramento Kings.

In the NHL: he Detroit Red Wings, for Hall of Famer Sid Abel; the Montreal Canadiens, for Hall of Famers Yvan Cournoyer and Dickie Moore; the Vancouver Canucks, for Stan Smyl; the jersey number 12 has also been retired by the men’s basketball program of the University of North Carolina for Phil Ford.

In Canadian football, 12 is the maximum number of players that can be on the field of play for each team at any time.
In ten-pin bowling, 12 is the number of strikes needed for a perfect game.
In curling, the House or the circular scoring area, is 12 feet in diameter.
In cricket, another sport with eleven players per team, teams may select a “12th man”, who may replace an injured player for the purpose of fielding (but not batting, bowling or keeping wicket).
In association football, 12 was also the number of teams in the finals of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in its first two editions in 1991 and 1995.

In books, music, movies and TV

Books
‘Twelfth Night’ is a comedy by William Shakespeare.
‘Twelve Angry Men’ by Reginald Rose, was adapted from his own teleplay (see TV below).
‘The Twelve’ is a poem by Aleksandr Blok.
‘Twelve’ is a novel by Nick McDonell.
‘The Twelve Chairs’ is a satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov.
‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ is a 1946 novel by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.
‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’ is a folk tale.
‘The Aeneid’, an epic poem by Virgil is divided into two halves composed of twelve books.
‘Paradise Lost’, an epic poem by John Milton is divided into twelve books perhaps in imitation of the Aeneid.
In ‘The Hunger Games’, the fictional country of Panem is separated into twelve districts.

Music
Twelve is the number of pitch classes in an octave; the total number of major keys; and the total number of minor keys.
The twelfth is the interval of an octave and a fifth. Instruments such as the clarinet which behave as a stopped cylindrical pipe overblow at the twelfth.
The twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. Music using the technique is called twelve-tone music.
One of the most famous classical music pieces is the 1812 overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
The 12-inch single is a vinyl record format.
B12 are a British electronic music duo consisting of Mike Golding and Steve Rutter.
There is a group called ‘Twelve Girls Band’.
‘Twelfth Night’ is a progressive rock band.
‘12 Play’ is an R. Kelly album.
‘The Number 12 Looks Like You’ is a mathcore band.
‘Twelve’ is an album by Patti Smith.
‘Twelve Deadly Cyns…and Then Some’ is an album by Cyndi Lauper.
‘D12’ a rap group also known as the ‘Dirty Dozen’.
There is a musical group named ‘12 Stones’.
‘12’, a Song from Brave Murder Day by Katatonia.
‘12’ is a studio album by German singer Herbert Grönemeyer.
‘12’ is the 12th studio album by Keller Williams.
‘12 Hundred’ is a song by band Mushroomhead of their Savior Sorrow album.
‘12’ (“Dodeka” in Greek) is one of the most well-known hits by Anna Vissi.
‘Twelve drummers drumming’ is the gift on the twelfth day of Christmas in the carol ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’.
‘12:59 Lullaby’ by Bedouin Soundclash.
‘Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35’ by Bob Dylan.
‘Little 12 Toes’ by Chavez (band).
‘12 Hours’ by Davenport Cabinet.
‘12’ by Hot Chip.
‘Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses’ by Kathy Mattea.
‘Twelve Reasons Why’ by My Life Story.
‘Dozen Wicked Words’ by The Longpigs.
‘Prelude 12’ by Styx.
‘12:51’ by The Strokes.
‘12 Steps’ by Violent Femmes.
‘The 12th Of September’ by Xavier Rudd.
‘12 Fingers’ by Young the Giant.
‘12-Bar Original’ by The Beatles.
Twelve is the number of studio albums ‘The Beatles’ released.

Movies
Movies with the number twelve or its variations in their titles include
12
12.01
12 Angry Men (1957 and 1997)
Cheaper by the Dozen
Ocean’s Twelve
12 Monkeys
The Dirty Dozen
12 Rounds
Twelve

Television
The number twelve plays a significant role in the television franchise Battlestar Galactica. The characters come from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol and worship the twelve lords of Kobol. In the re-imagined series, there are also twelve models of the humanoid version of Cylons.
Twelve Angry Men, the original 1954 live performance on the anthology television series Studio One.
‘Number 12 Looks Just Like You’ is an episode of the television show The Twilight Zone.
Schoolhouse Rock! portrayed an alien child using base-twelve arithmetic in the short ‘Little Twelvetoes’.
12 Oz Mouse was an animated television show on Adult Swim.

In transport

Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior
The Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, more commonly known as the Lockheed 12 or L-12, is an eight-seat, six-passenger all-metal twin-engine transport aircraft of the late 1930s designed for use by small airlines, companies, and wealthy private individuals.
A scaled-down version of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra, the Lockheed 12 was not popular as an airliner but was widely used as a corporate and government transport. Several were also used for testing new aviation technologies.
Aviator Milo Burcham flew a Lockheed 12A in the 1937 Bendix Trophy Race from Burbank, California to Cleveland, Ohio. This 12A had been modified with extra fuel tanks in the cabin, allowing it to save time by making the entire 2,043-mile (3,288 km) trip non-stop. The 12A came in fifth at an average speed of 184 mph (296 km/h); this was an impressive performance, since the first and fourth-place winners were both privately owned Seversky P-35 fighters.
Another Lockheed 12A, owned by Republic Oil Company and named The Texan, was modified by aviator Jimmie Mattern for a round-the-world flight attempt. Mattern filled the 12A’s cabin with fuel tanks and removed the cabin windows and door; the crew would enter the aircraft via a cockpit hatch. The aircraft was denied a U.S. permit for the flight following the Earhart incident (she had been flying a Lockheed 10 Electra), however it was pressed into action September 1937 in a long range search effort for Sigizmund Levanevsky who crashed somewhere between the North pole and Barrow, Alaska. “The Texan” was outfitted as a luxury transport afterward, and lost in a hangar fire in January 1938.

Hispano-Suiza J12
The Hispano-Suiza J12 was a luxury automobile made by Hispano-Suiza from 1931 to 1938. It replaced the Hispano-Suiza H6. The J12 was powered by a V12 engine with pushrod-operated overhead valves.
Hispano-Suiza suspended automobile production in 1938 to concentrate on the manufacture of aircraft engines.

Renault 12
The Renault 12 is a family car produced by French automaker Renault between 1969 and 1980. Available as a saloon (Berline) and estate (Break), it was also produced under license in many countries across the globe into the early 21st century.
In its first few years the 12 received praise from the European press for its spacious, comfortable interior, its styling, its performance and its low fuel consumption. However it fared worse in the North American press: in a test of the 1974 model, Road & Track was critical of the engine’s “obtrusive” noise, and called the heavy, non-power steering “a serious design flaw”. They also gave it “very poor marks” for the ventilation system.
Renault 12 production and sales ended in western Europe in 1980, but the model continued to be produced and sold by Renault affiliates elsewhere. The last R12 was produced in 1999 in Turkey, whilst Romanian automaker Dacia continued producing the R12-based 1310 sedan and estate until 2004 and the R12-based Dacia Pick-Up until December 2006.
In terms of sales the Renault 12 was a successful car, selling 2.5 million units.

McLaren M12
The McLaren M12 was an open-cockpit racing car developed by Bruce McLaren Motor Racing in 1969, solely for the purpose of selling to customers in the Can-Am series.
The M12 combined elements from two of McLaren’s previous efforts, the M6 series and the M8 series.
One of the more notable owners of an M12 was Chaparral Cars, who used the McLaren in the early 1969 Can-Am season while their own model’s development had been delayed.

BMW E12
The BMW E12 BMW 5-Series was made between 1972 and 1981. The E12 was the first series to bear the 5 Series name: the ‘5’ denoting BMW’s fifth ‘New Class’ platform. Designed as a replacement for the popular BMW New Class mid-size sedan, the E12 5-Series models were smaller than the large BMW E3 sedan but larger than the two-door 2002 models.
The E12 was replaced by the BMW E28 5 Series in 1981, although production continued until 1984 in South Africa.

Volkswagen W12 Coupe
The Volkswagen W12 Coupe (also known as the Volkswagen Nardò, with reference to the Nardò Ring vehicle test track, near to the Italian city of Nardò) was a concept car created by Volkswagen Passenger Cars in 1997.
The car is portrayed in games such as Heat Online, Gran Turismo, and the Test Drive series.
This car also featured in an April Fools joke as the new Volkswagen 2015 LeVanto.

Vector M12
The Vector M12 was a vehicle designed by parent company Megatech LTD the Vector Motors Corporation, and was the first vehicle produced after the hostile takeover of the company from Jerry Wiegert by the Indonesian company Megatech.
The vehicle was a rebodied Lamborghini Diablo with a chopper gun fiberglass body set on a lengthened Diablo chassis. It was a loose copy of the Vector AWX-3, which was not released due to the Megatech hostile takeover.
The M12 was able to accelerate from zero to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 4.8 seconds and had a top speed of 189 mph (304 km/h) and was produced from 1995 to 1999, when production was halted, partly due to slow sales of the cars and alleged mismanagement of the company.
The average price of the vehicle was $184,000 (USD). Today you can purchase a M12 normally for $65,000 to an astounding $189,000 paid by a purchaser of a purple M12 at Barrett Jackson for a record sale price.

Noble M12
The Noble M12 is a two-door, two-seat model, originally planned both as a coupe and as a convertible.
All M12s have been powered by modified bi-turbocharged Ford Duratec V6 engines. The M12 has a full steel roll cage, steel frame, and G.R.P. (fibreglass) composite clam shell body parts.
These famed “Ferrari killers” are extremely lightweight and stiff. Although looking to be track derived, the M12 performs very well on both road and track, with surprisingly good ride quality, but a rigid feel. This is achieved by having no anti-roll bars on the car. This allows the suspension to be stiff yet comfortable.

Ferrari F12 Berlinetta
The Ferrari F12 berlinetta (also unofficially referred to as the F12 Berlinetta or the F12) is a front mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive grand tourer produced by Italian sports car manufacturer Ferrari. The F12 Berlinetta, introduced to the public at the 2012 Geneva Motor Show, replaces the Ferrari 599 series grand tourers.
The F12berlinetta was named “The Supercar of the Year 2012” by car magazine Top Gear.

Spyker E12 Zagato
Spyker Cars shareholder and CEO, Victor Muller hinted at a Maserati Quattroporte, Porsche Panamera rival with an eight-cylinder (the E8) or a twelve-cylinder (the E12) engine, but due to problems getting the D8 into production, the idea was ignored until recently when Muller has said he “believes now could be the time to resurrect the saloon.”
Muller believes it will take about four years from time E8/E12 is revealed to the time it starts production. In March 2011, Muller stated that the production version of the Spyker E8/E12 will use a twelve-cylinder instead of the proposed eight-cylinder engine.

V12 engine
A V12 engine is a V engine with 12 cylinders mounted on the crankcase in two banks of six cylinders, usually but not always at a 60° angle to each other, with all 12 pistons driving a common crankshaft.
Since each cylinder bank is essentially a straight-6, this configuration has perfect primary and secondary balance no matter which V angle is used and therefore needs no balance shafts. A V12 with two banks of six cylinders angled at 60°, 120° or 180° (with the latter configuration usually referred to as a flat-12) from each other has even firing with power pulses delivered twice as often per revolution as a straight-6.
This allows for great refinement in a luxury car. In a racing car, the rotating parts can be made much lighter and thus more responsive, since there is no need to use counterweights on the crankshaft as is needed in a 90° V8 and less need for the inertial mass in a flywheel to smooth out the power delivery. In a large displacement, heavy-duty engine, a V12 can run slower than smaller engines, prolonging engine life.

W12 engine
A W12 engine is a twelve cylinder piston internal combustion engine in a W configuration.
W12 engines are manufactured in two distinct configurations. One configuration uses four rows of three cylinders merged into two ‘cylinder banks’ (two narrow-angle VR6 engine blocks), coupled to a common crankshaft – as in the Volkswagen Group W12. Another uses three banks of four cylinders coupled to a common crankshaft – as in the Napier Lion.

Other stuff

There are twelve basic hues in the color wheel; 3 primary colors (red, yellow, blue), 3 secondary colors (orange, green & purple) and 6 tertiary colors (names for these vary, but are intermediates between the primaries and secondaries).
There are 12 ounces in a troy pound (used for precious metals)
There are 12 signs of the zodiac.
In English, twelve is the number of greatest magnitude that has just one syllable.
There are normally twelve pairs of ribs in the human body.
The Twelve Tables or Lex Duodecim Tabularum, more informally simply Duodecim Tabulae was the ancient legislation underlying Roman law.
In the United States, twelve people are appointed to sit on a jury for felony trials in all but four states, and in federal and Washington, D.C. courts. The number of jurors gave the title to the play (and subsequent films) Twelve Angry Men.
There are 12 inches in a foot.
Twelve shillings made up one British pound in pre decimal currency.
There are 12 face cards in a normal card deck.
Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 steps, 12 traditions and 12 concepts for world service.
Most calendar systems have twelve months in a year.
The Western zodiac has twelve signs, as does the Chinese zodiac.
The Chinese use a 12 year cycle for time-reckoning called Earthly Branches.
There are twenty-four hours in a day, the hours being numbered from one to twelve for both the ante meridiem (a.m.) half of the day and the post meridiem (p.m.) half of the day. The basic units of time (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours) can all perfectly divide by twelve.

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More Facts – And That’s A Fact!

July 9, 2013July 8, 2013 fasab Factoids, Unusual 1666, 4:20, airplane, Al Capone, Al Shaheen oil well, Alcatraz, animals, bathrooms, blink, boat, Boston, Boston University Bridge, Brazil, Butte County, car, Casablanca, cement, clocks, common name, Commonwealth Avenue, cork production, data, death, deepest hole in the world, deepest oil well, donkeys, doors, education, elevators, Entertainment, exercise bikes, Exxon Mobil, fact, factoid, facts, fingernails, fireplaces, fly backwards, four, geographical center of North America, geographical center of the US, Great Fire of London, Great Lake, hummingbirds, information, injured, inmates, Italy, jail, Japan, kill, live in, London, Mario Rossi, Massachusetts, men, Michigan, Midnight Cowboy, Misc, Miscellaneous, movie, nominated for an Oscar, North Dakota, People, plane crashes, power lights, pronounced, Qatar, questions, Random, random facts, reduced sentences, role, Rugby, Russia, sail, Sakhali I oil well, shortest performance, South Dakota, spain, staircases, stung by a bee, Sylvia Miles, toenails, town, train, trivia, unlucky, visit, weather, White House, windows, windy day, women, work in, world’s deepest hole

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Welcome to another selection of random facts and the chance to prepare yourself for questions that you may never be asked.

Enjoy.

While in Alcatraz, Al Capone was inmate 85.

The airport scene at the end of classic movie “Casablanca”

was produced using a cardboard model of a plane

and little people actors in the background!!

Donkeys kill more people than plane crashes.

The White House has 32 bathrooms,

and 6 levels to accommodate all the people

who live in, work in, and visit the White House.

There are also 412 doors, 147 windows,

28 fireplaces, 7 staircases, and 3 elevators.

Hummingbirds are the only animals that can fly backwards.

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down

but only 6 people were injured.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Each year there is one ton of cement poured

for each man woman and child in the world.

The most common name in Italy is Mario Rossi.

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!

Rugby, North Dakota is the geographical center of North America.

Butte County, South Dakota is the geographical center of the U.S.

No matter where you stand in Michigan,

you are never more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.

The number “four” is considered unlucky in Japan

because it is pronounced the same as “death”.

Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance

ever nominated for an Oscar with “Midnight Cowboy.”

Her entire role lasted only six minutes.

You’re more likely to get stung by a bee

on a windy day than in any other weather.

The world’s deepest hole is the Sakhali I oil well in Russia

(part owned by Exxon Mobil) which is 12.345 Km. deep (7.67 miles).

Previously to this the Al Shaheen oil well (12.29km or 7.64 miles)

dug in Qatar was the deepest oil well.

Spain leads the world in cork production

A jail in Brazil allows its inmates to pedal exercise bikes

to power lights in a nearby town in exchange for reduced sentences.

The Boston University Bridge

(on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts)

is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train

driving under a car driving under an airplane.

==================================

Treadmills Get You Nowhere

March 14, 2013 fasab comedy, Humour, Language, Puns, Uncategorized, Unusual a handle on life, adoption, Ahmal, amusing, antennas, b-negative, bad jokes, banning the bra, blood type, book on voyeurism, Boston, Bubble wrap, camouflage trousers, carpet store, ceremony, Comedy, corduroy pillows, dog, Egypt, Entertainment, Eskimos, funny, headlines, Humor, Humour, identical twins, jokes, Juan, kayak, khakis, Misc, Miscellaneous, paws, peeping tome, pessimist, play on words, pun, puns, Random, reception, rug related, silly jokes, spain, stupid, thieves, three rights make a left, Treadmills, two wrongs don't make a right, woman, word play, word plays

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Pun day!

Steel yourselves for some more rather bad jokes.

There must be a few out there with masochistic tendencies because you seem to enjoy puns or word play jokes.

Me too.

So let’s get on with today’s selection.

Enjoy!

I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.

Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again

that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn’t find any.

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married.

The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.

Banning the bra was a big flop.

Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

Khakis: What you need to start the car in Boston.

A pessimist’s blood type is always b-negative.

A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only shorts made from Bubble wrap.

The psychiatrist says, “Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts.”

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

But three rights make a left.

Thieves broke into the carpet store last night.

Police think it might be rug related.

Corduroy pillows. They’re making headlines.

Why was the dog standing still?

Because it was on paws.

A woman has identical twins and gives them up for adoption.

One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.”

The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.”

Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother.

Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal.

Her husband responds, “They’re twins for goodness sake! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

======================

It’s Monday And That Means Some More Quiz Show Answers.

February 11, 2013February 11, 2013 fasab Bloopers, comedy, Humour, Quiz Show Answers, Uncategorized, Unusual amusing, Awake, bicycle, bite, Boston, Boston Symphony Orchestra, cartoon mascot, cast member, cereal, ceremony, China, collar, Comedy, concert tour, Cornelius, crown, Entertainment, figure skater, flea, fools, former child actor, funny, Gary Coleman, hard cheese, Humor, Humour, idiots, International Business Machines, Jehovah's Witnesses, jumping insect, Latin, mad, Madonna, magazine, Mama's Family, market, Misc, Miscellaneous, Monarch, Monica Lewinsky, morons, Nancy Kerrigan, NBC, NYB, Olympic, People, Planet of the Apes, player's strike, plum, quiz, quiz show answers, Random, religion, Rice Krispies, Rome, sporting event, stock symbol, stupid, stupid people, stupidity, Swiss, television, The Carol Burnett Show, title character, turtle, tv, underwear, unripe fruit, US state, wingless

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

It’s Monday and that means some more quiz show answers.

I can’t make up my mind if they are getting worse every week, but they don’t ever seem to improve much that’s for sure!

Enjoy.

Q: What hard cheese derives its name from the city of Rome?

A: Swiss

Q: Who are the cartoon mascots of Rice Krispies cereal?

A: Crispy & Crunch

Q: In religion, the Jehovah’s Witnesses distribute Awake and what other magazine?

A: MAD

Q: What stock symbol does International Business Machines trade under?

A: NYB

Q: What former child actor played the sympathetic Cornelius in the original “Planet of the Apes”?

A: Gary Coleman

Q: In 1994, what sporting event was canceled due to a player’s strike?

A: China

Q: What “T” is both an item of underwear and a rising column of warm air?

A: Turtle

Q: The name of what ceremony of the installation of a new monarch comes from the Latin for “crown”?

A: Head

Q: Which US state is home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra?

A: Boston

Q: What cast member of “The Carol Burnett Show” played the title character on NBC’s “Mama’s Family?”

A: Mama

Q: Which figure skater was implicated in the 1994 attack on Olympic teammate Nancy Kerrigan?

A: Monica Lewinsky

Q: In nature, most unripe fruit is which color, purple or green?

A: Plum

Q: What was the name of Madonna’s concert tour in 1990?

A: Blond Tart

Q: The name of which small, wingless, jumping insect precedes “bite”, “collar”, and “market” to give three familiar terms?

A: Bicycle

===============================

Coffee Anyone?

January 30, 2013 fasab Factoids, Uncategorized, Unusual 1675, 1773, 1785, 9th century, addicted to coffee, African coffee beans, African tribes, alcohol, America, american civil war, American coffee trader, American colonies, American GIs, American servicemen, Americano, antioxidants, Arab culture, Arabian Wine, Arabica, Arabica coffee, Archives of Internal Medicine, aromas, aromatic compounds, aspirin, bags of coffee, bean belt, beans, Beethoven, Belgiun, better quality, beverage, black coffee, body, Boston, Boston Tea Party, Brazil, brew coffee, brewing, bridegroom, Cafe Au Lait, Cafe Away, caffeinated coffee, caffeine, calories, cancer and capricorn, Candy, cappuccino, Capuchin monks, Charles II, chocolate, coffee, coffee ads, coffee bars, coffee berries, coffee bombs, coffee cherries, coffee consumption, Coffee Day, coffee filter, Coffee Houses, coffee markets, coffee percolator, coffee revolt, coffee sacks, coffee tree, Colombia, Cornell University, Costa Rica, cowboys, cup of coffee, cup of Joe, dark roast coffee, David Levitsky, decaffeinated coffee, Dorothy Jones, Dresden, education, energy balls, Entertainment, espresso, espresso machine, ethopian, Ethopian shepherds, European Coffee Houses, excelso, expression of freedom, flower, food, french, French and American Revolutions, French doctor, French philosopher, future husband, George Washington, Germany, goats, Greece, green coffee beans, grounds for divorce, grows coffee, Guatemala, half a kilo, hand in marriage, Harvard School of Public Health, Hawaii, hemp, high officials, illicit coffee smugglers, Indonesia, instant coffee, International Olympic Committee, Irish coffee, Islam, Italian government, Italians, James Mason, Japan, Japanese, Japanese American, Java, Java Bean, Jim Henson, Johan Sebastian Bach, Kaffee Schnuffler, kahveci, Kenyan coffee, King Frederick of Germany, King of England, legally divorce, lethal dose, lifespan, light roast coffee, Lloyds of London, London, Margaret Hamilton, Marijuana, Maxwell House, Maxwell House Good to the last drop, Melitta Bentz, methylene chloride, Misc, Miscellaneous, Mocha, Mocha Java coffee, Muppets, new york, New York Stock Exchange, New Yorkers, Nicaraguan Margogpipe, nobility, Norway, oil, olympic games, Opera, organic solvent, painkillers, paracetamol, parents, patients, peanut butter, physicians, phytochemicals, plastic, plot, Pope Clement VIII, proclamation, prohibited substances, Prussia, psychoactive, Random, religion, rise of islam, roasted, roasting, Robusta, Roman Catholics, salty, Satori Kato, scented postage stamp, scientists, special task force, species, sperm motility, state in the US, Staten Island, sugar, supremo, sweet coffee, sweetener, sweetness, tea tax, Teddy Roosevelt, the clergy, therapeutic dose, tipping waiters, traded commodity, trees, Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, tropics of cancer and capricorn, Turkey, Turkish coffee, United States, University of Cambridge, University of Sao Paulo, Venice, Voltaire, webcam, wedding, white flowers, Wicked Witch Of The West, wives, Wizard Of Oz, Women’s Petition Against Coffee, WPAC, WWII, Yemen

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have realised that I like facts about various subjects.

One of them is food.

I have already done a post about peanut butter (click here) and one about chocolate (click here) , both everyday items that almost all of use and enjoy. ‘

Today’s post is about probably THE most loved and enjoyed drink that we use everyday.

So here we have lots and lots of things you probably never knew about you coffee.

Enjoy (with a nice cup of coffee or three perhaps).

According to legend during the 9th century Ethopian shepherds first noticed the effects of caffeine when they saw their goats appearing to become frisky and ‘dance’ after eating coffee berries.

Originally coffee was eaten.

African tribes mixed coffee berries with fat to make energy balls

Coffee has been used as a beverage for over 700 years.

The rise of Islam contributed greatly to the popularilty of coffee. The religion prohibited drinking alcohol, but coffee was considered an acceptable drink

In Turkey, the bridegroom as once required to make a vow during the wedding to always make sure to provide their wives with coffee. If they did not do so it was considered grounds for divorce.

Also in Turkey, the intended bride is required to serve coffee to her parents and future husband when he comes to ask for her hand in marriage; however, she has no say so in the outcome of the request. Tradition has it that her response is in the sweetness or lack thereof of the coffee. Sweet coffee supposedly means she is okay with the arrangement while salty means she is not.

All the coffee grown in the world grows in the bean belt which is the area between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn

Hawaii is the only state in the US that grows coffee

The heavy tea tax imposed on the American colonies in 1773, which caused the ‘Boston Tea Party’, resulted in America switching from tea to coffee. Drinking coffee became an expression of freedom.

Black coffee with no sugar contains no calories.

Drinking a single cup of coffee that has been brewing for 20 minutes provides the body with 300 phytochemicals which act as antioxidants and stay in the body for up to a month.

New Yorkers drink almost seven times more coffee than other cities in the US.

Coffee is a psychoactive. And at high doses it can make you see things… It can also kill you…The lethal dose of caffeine is roughly 100 cups of coffee.

The French philosopher Voltaire is said to have drank 50 cups of coffee a day.

In 1675 Charles II, King of England issued a proclamation banning Coffee Houses. He said that they were places where people met to plot against him.

Coffee is the second most traded commodity on earth, after oil.

70% of the world consumes Arabica coffee, which is mild and aromatic. The remaining 30% drink Robusta, which is more bitter tasting but has 50% more caffeine than Arabica

Coffee grows on trees, which can grow up to 30 feet tall but commercially are cultivated to around 10 feet in height for easier picking

A coffee tree has a lifespan of about 50 to 70 years.

When it is in bloom, the coffee tree is covered with 30,000 white flowers which begin to develop into fruit after 24 – 36 hours.

A coffee tree can flower eight times in any one year – depending on rainfall.

The coffee cherries turn from yellow to orange and then bright red, 6 – 8 months after flowering.

One coffee tree yields less than half a kilo of coffee per year.

A French doctor in the 1600s suggested Cafe Au Laits for patients, inspiring people to begin adding milk to coffee.

The coffee bean is actually a seed inside a bright red berry

Coffee berries are picked, dried and stripped down until all that is left is the green bean

Once shipped the beans are roasted at around 500F, after a few minutes the bean will pop and double in size, a few minutes after that the bean will pop again which means the bean is ready

The aromas in coffee develop at the 10th minute of roasting.

Coffee increases in volume during roasting by 18.60%.

Caffeine is not the main bitter compound in coffee. Rather, the pungent perpetrators are antioxidants.

George Washington invented instant coffee. No, not him, the George Washington from Belgiun, living in Guatemala in 1906, although the invention has also been claimed by a Japanese American chemist known as Satori Kato in 1901.

Espresso is regulated by the Italian government because it is considered an essential part of their daily life

Espresso is not a particular roast, bean or blend, just the way the coffee is prepared by shooting pressurized hot water through finely ground coffee

Brewed espresso has 2.5% fat, while filtered coffee contains 0.6% fat.

It takes 40 coffee beans to make an espresso.

In 1822 the French were the first to innovate a crude espresso machine. The Italians then perfected this machine and became the first to manufacture it.

Contrary to popular belief, espresso has one-third the caffeine of a cup of coffee, simply due to serving size differences.

In 1785, the coffee revolt broke out in Prussia because coffee consumption was restricted to the nobility, the clergy and high officials.

James Mason invented the coffee percolator on December 26, 1865.

30% of coffee drinkers in US added a sweetener of some kind to their coffee, compared with 57% in UK.

Coffee sacks are usually made of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.

October 1st is official “Coffee Day” in Japan.

Scientists have discovered more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.

Italy now has over 200,000 coffee bars, and still growing.

The term Americano comes from American GIs during WWII who would order espresso with water to dilute the strong flavor

The term cup of Joe also comes from American servicemen in WWII who were known as big coffee drinkers

The custom of tipping waiters originated in early European Coffee Houses, in order to receive good service in that loud, dirty, hectic place you needed to Tip Big.

In the ancient Arab culture there was only one way a woman could legally divorce: If her husband didn’t provide enough coffee.

Melitta Bentz a housewife from Dresden, Germany, invented the first coffee filter in 1908.

Johan Sebastian Bach wrote an opera about a woman who was addicted to coffee.

There is a way to brew coffee with marijuana in it and it is described as producing a “dreamy” kind of coffee buzz.

In Greece and Turkey, the oldest person is always served their coffee first.

Some of the worlds most powerful businesses, including Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange, started life as a coffee houses.

In the 1600s there was a controversy over whether or not Catholics could drink coffee, luckily for them Pope Clement VIII loved coffee and authorized its use.

Caffeine, which is found in coffee, increases the effect of some painkillers, especially aspirin and paracetamol.

Dorothy Jones of Boston was the first American coffee trader, In 1670 she was granted a license to sell coffee.

In Africa coffee beans are soaked in water mixed with spices and served as candy to chew.

A regular 6oz cup of coffee contains about 150 milligrams of caffeine, most physicians call this a “therapeutic dose”.

There are over 50 species of coffee world wide. Though only 2, arabica and robusta, are commonly used in commercial coffee production.

Robusta coffee beans have twice as much caffeine than Arabica beans, but our of less quality.

If you drink five to 10 cups of decaffeinated coffee, you could get as much caffeine as from one or two cups of caffeinated coffee, a study found.

To produce decaffeinated coffee the beans are steamed, so that dissolved caffeine rises to the surface, where it is washed off using an organic solvent called methylene chloride.

Coffee can actually be used to fuel a car.

At one point, Brazil had such a coffee surplus that they tried to find other uses for it, including using it to make plastic.

The world record for most coffee consumption is 82 cups of coffee in 7 hours.

Contrary to popular belief light roast coffee actually has more caffeine than dark roast coffee. The reason for this is that the longer coffee is roasted the more caffeine cooked out of the bean.

An expert in preparing Turkish coffee is known as a “kahveci”.

The Nicaraguan Margogpipe is the largest of all coffee beans.

King Frederick of Germany created a special task force to search out illicit coffee smugglers. The task force was known as the Kaffee Schnuffler. The king believed that soldiers who drank coffee were not dependable.

Both the French and American Revolutions were planned in coffee houses.

‘Excelso’ or ‘supremo’ do not mean a better quality of coffee when used to describe coffee beans, it refers to the size of the coffee bean.

Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets got his start doing coffee ads.

One the largest misconception in the U.S. today about coffee is that Mocha Java coffee is a chocolaty beverage. In fact there is no chocolate in the Mocha or Java bean at all. Mocha is the name of the largest port in Yemen, here is where all of the African coffee beans are traded and transported. Java is the name of an island in Indonesia where the Java Bean comes from. Both coffees are a dark bean and provide a very rich and bold coffee, when you mix the two together you get Mocha Java coffee.

Coffee at one stage in its life or another provides a living to more than 100 million people.

During World War II there was a coffee drinking competition between the branches of the military. The Marines claimed to drink the most – twenty cups a day.

Coffee was so scarce in Germany that during WWII “coffee bombs” or bags of coffee were dropped from planes to turn the people against their government.

In Staten Island, there’s a restaurant owner that drinks fifty cups of coffee a day.

The actress who played the Wicked Witch Of The West in the Wizard Of Oz, Margaret Hamilton, was promoting Maxwell House in the 1970’s.

In December 2001 Brazil produced a scented postage stamp to promote its coffee – the smell should last between 3 and 5 years.

No matter what people tell you, caffeine cannot help you sober up.

The first webcam was invented at The University of Cambridge to let people know if the coffee pot was full or not.

The Japanese believe that bathing in coffee grounds fermented with pineapple pulp will reduce wrinkles and beautify the skin and there is a spa in Japan that lets you bathe in coffee, tea, or wine. I wouldn’t drink it though…

Before coffee caught on in the US in the 1700s, beer was breakfast drink of choice. Difficult choice!

Irish coffee was actually invented to warm up cold American plane passengers leaving from Ireland.

On May 11, 1926, the slogan “Maxwell House Good to the last drop” was trademark registered.

There is a tourist agency for people wanting to take coffee vacations called Cafe Away.

Norway drinks the most coffee per person. The United States is ranked number 12.

Teddy Roosevelt is and was the greatest American coffee drinker, consuming a gallon a day. But you probably shouldn’t attempt to do that.

The name cappuccino comes from: the resemblance of the drink to the clothing of the Capuchin monks.

A study conducted at the University of Sao Paulo found that sperm motility was markedly higher in coffee drinkers versus non coffee-drinkers. And it turns out that it doesn’t matter whether you drink one or ten cups a day: The only detectable difference was found between coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers.

Beethoven counted the number of coffee beans he used to make his coffee and insisted on 60 beans per cup.

During the American Civil War soldiers who were craving coffee and couldn’t get it tried roasting sweet potatoes and corn to make a beverage similar to coffee. It obviously didn’t become a popular choice.

In 1674 a group of London women formed a group called WPAC (Women’s Petition Against Coffee). They didn’t like the amount of time their husbands spent in coffee houses rather than being home where they belonged.

According to David Levitsky, PhD, professor of nutritional science at Cornell University, “Caffeine decreases the rate at which the stomach dumps its contents into the duodenum – a part of the small intestine where digestion takes place – and also increases metabolic rate.” so sipping a cup post-meal could, in small part, help promote a healthy weight.

Water is the only beverage more popular than coffee.

Coffee contains over 1200 chemicals and over half of those are responsible for creating its flavor.

The average coffee drinker consumes 3 cups of coffee per day.

Three countries consume 65% of the world’s coffee: America, France, and Germany.

Coffee grounds sprinkled on the ground around plants and the garden will stop snails and slugs from eating the plants.

Kenyan coffees are graded as ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. ‘AA’ is the best coffee. In Costa Rica, coffees are graded as ‘Strictly Hard Bean’, ‘Good Hard Bean’, ‘Hard Bean’, ‘Medium Hard Bean’, ‘High Grown Atlantic’, ‘Medium Grown Atlantic’, and ‘Low Grown Atlantic’. Those coffee beans from Colombia are labelled as ‘Supremo’, ‘Excelso’, ‘Extra’ and the lowest grade, ‘Pasilla’.

In 1763, there were over 200 coffee shops in Venice.

Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per millilitre of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about 5 cups of coffee.

Coffee was first known in Europe as Arabian Wine.

It was said that cowboys made their coffee by putting ground coffee into a sock (hopefully a clean one) and immersed it in water heated over a camp fire. When ready, they would pour the coffee into tin cups and drink it.

A study from the Harvard School of Public Health, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that women who regularly drink fully caffeinated coffee have a 20% lower risk of depression than non-coffee drinkers. The study, which followed a group of women for 10 years, found that as more coffee was consumed (up to six cups per day), the likelihood of depression decreased.

There are two major coffee markets in the world. One is in London, which deals with the buying of Robusta coffee. The other is the ‘C’ contract market, known as Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange (CSCE), which is in New York. It handles the trade of Arabica coffee. The ‘C’ market is also a futures market.

Finally, can you see the man?

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number Six 6

December 21, 2012December 21, 2012 fasab Factoids, Numbers, Politics, Sport, Unusual, vacation, video, War 10 round, 5 round, 57 mm gun, 57 mm Gun M1, 6, 6 celestial paramanus, 6 O'clock Saints, 6 round, 8 round, A A Milne, AC Milan, Academy Award, Ace Bailey, Adelaide, Adenine, Adolf Hitler, Africa, Air Force Combat Systems Officer, Air Group Six, Al Kaline, all-Harshad numbers, amateur radio, American football, ammunition, amusement parks, Anne Heche, anti-tank gun, Apollo 6, Arsenal, Arthur Honegger, association football, astrological sign, astrology, AT-6, Atlanta Braves, atomic number, atoms, Audi, Audi quattro AWD, Audi S6, Australia, Australian Labor Party, Australian Rules football, Ayurveda, basic trigonometric functions, bassoon, Battle of Midway, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Beechcraft T-6 Texan II, beehive honeycomb, benzene molecule, Berlin, bike, Bill of Rights, Bill Russell, Bionic Six, BlackBerry, BlackBerry 8700, Bobby Cox, Bombing Six, books, Boston, Boston 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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

By special request, today’s significant number is the number six. My thanks to John in Australia for the suggestion, turns out it was a very interesting choice. So let’s get started. Enjoy.

The Number Six 6

In religion

Chapter One of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament, tells us that the Creation was done over a six day period, and that man was created on day number 6. Moreover, six days were appointed to man for his labor, while one day is associated in sovereignty with the Lord God, as His rest.
The serpent also was created on the sixth day.
The Sixth Commandment relates to the worst sin – murder.
The sixth clause of the Lord’s prayer treats of sin.
There are six points on a Star of David.

There are six Orders of the Mishnah.
Six symbolic foods are placed on the Passover Seder Plate.
The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan.

In Islam there are Six articles of belief
Fasting six days of Shawwal, together with the month of Ramadan, is equivalent to fasting the whole year

In Hindu theology, a trasarenu is the combination of 6 celestial paramanus (atoms)

In mathematics

Six is the first number which is neither a square number nor a prime number.
Six is the largest of the four all-Harshad numbers.
There are six basic trigonometric functions.
A cube has six faces.

A hexagon is a regular polygon with six sides.
A hexahedron is a polyhedron with six faces, with a cube being a special case.
S6, with 720 elements, is the only finite symmetric group which has an outer automorphism. This automorphism allows us to construct a number of exceptional mathematical objects such as the S(5,6,12) Steiner system, the projective plane of order 4 and the Hoffman-Singleton graph.
Six similar coins can be arranged around a central coin of the same radius so that each coin makes contact with the central one (and touches both its neighbors without a gap), but seven cannot be so arranged. This makes 6 the answer to the two-dimensional kissing number problem. The densest sphere packing of the plane is obtained by extending this pattern to the hexagonal lattice in which each circle touches just six others.

In science

Six is the atomic number of carbon.
A benzene molecule has a ring of six carbon atoms.
The prefix “hexa-“ (Greek word for ‘six’) also occurs in the systematic name of many chemical compounds, such as “hexamethyl”.
A hexamer is an oligomer made of six sub-units.
Adenine is one of four bases that code for all life in deoxyribonucleic acid. Adenine’s molecular structure is based on a hexagonal ring bonded to a pentagonal ring.

In the Standard Model of particle physics, there are six types of quark and six types of lepton.
In statistical mechanics, the six-vertex model has six possible configurations of arrows at each vertex.
The six-fold symmetry of snowflakes arises from the hexagonal crystal structure of ordinary ice.
People with sexdactyly have six fingers on each hand.

Six babies delivered in one birth are sextuplets.
There are six tastes in traditional Indian Medicine called Ayurveda: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. These tastes are used to suggest a diet based on the symptoms of the body.
Phase 6 is one of six pandemic influenza phases.
The cells of a beehive honeycomb are 6-sided.

Insects have 6 legs.
The measuring instrument called a sextant got its name because its shape forms one-sixth of a whole circle.

In space

The New General Catalogue object NGC 6 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda.
Messier object M6, a magnitude 4.5 open cluster in the constellation Scorpius, also known as the Butterfly Cluster.

The gaseous planet Saturn has hexagonal clouds on its north pole discovered by Voyager 1 in 1977 and verified again in 2006 by the Cassini spacecraft, meaning this hexagon is a persistent structure on the scale of a planet.

Saturn's hexagonal north pole clouds — Saturn’s hexagonal north pole clouds

Apollo 6
Apollo 6, the final unmanned mission of the United States Apollo Program, was launched on April 4, 1968. It was an A type mission and the second test flight for the Saturn V launch vehicle, intended to demonstrate full lunar injection capability of the Saturn V with a nearly full simulated payload, and also the capability of the Command Module’s heat shield to withstand a lunar-speed re-entry.

The mission was not designed to go to the moon, but merely to achieve a trans-lunar speed toward an imaginary point in space nowhere near the moon, then turn around and return in about 10 hours.
However, fuel line failures in several Saturn V second and third stage engines prevented it from achieving lunar injection, but it was able to get close to lunar return velocity by using the Apollo spacecraft’s engine, as was done on Apollo 4, the first Saturn V test. Despite the engine failures, the flight nonetheless provided NASA with enough confidence in the Saturn V to use it for manned launches.
Launch video

In politics

Massachusetts was sixth to receive statehood on, Wednesday, February 6, 1788.
The Sixth Amendment (Amendment VI) to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. The Supreme Court has applied the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The sixth President of the United States of America was John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) who served from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829. His V.P. Was John C. Calhoun.

John Quincy Adams Sixth President of the United States of America

The sixth Prime Minister of Australia was Sir Joseph Cook, (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947). A coal miner from Silverdale, Staffordshire, Cook emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887.
He was a founding member of the Australian Labor Party, and was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as Member for Hartley in 1891.
Later Cook switched to the Free Trade Party, and was a minister in the cabinet of Premier George Reid from 1894 to 1899. During Australia’s first federal election in 1901, Cook was elected unopposed to the federal seat of Parramatta, and served as the deputy to Reid, then Alfred Deakin, following the creation of the Commonwealth Liberal Party from Cook’s and Deakin’s parties.
As leader of the Liberal Party, Cook became Prime Minister following the 1913 elections; but he only had a one-seat majority in the lower house and no majority at all in the upper house, so he repeatedly sought to obtain a double dissolution. The outbreak of World War I just before the September 1914 election led to a Labor victory. Following a split in the Labor party in 1916, Cook joined William Morris Hughes’ Nationalist Party of Australia, and following the Nationalist victory in the 1917 election, served as Minister for the Navy, then Treasurer under Hughes.
In 1921 Cook resigned from the federal parliament, and was appointed Australian High Commissioner in London. During 1928 and 1929, he headed the Royal Commission into South Australia as affected by Federation. He died in Sydney in 1947.

Joseph Cook sixth Prime Minister of Australia

Australia has six states, Queensland (capital, Brisbane); New South Wales (capital, Sydney); Victoria (capital, Melbourne); Tasmania (capital, Hobart); South Australia (capital, Adelaide); and Western Australia (capital, Perth). The Northern Territory (capital, Darwin), as the name implies, is classed as a ‘territory’, not a ‘state’.

The ‘Six Counties’ is a term used to describe Northern Ireland which consists of the six north-eastern counties of the island of Ireland. It was created when Ireland was partitioned in 1921. After a campaign of terrorism, murder and bombing lasting almost thirty years the London government (of first Conservative John Major and later Labour Tony Blair) along with the Clinton administration brought about a ‘peace’ agreement that saw terrorists installed as part of the Northern Ireland government in Belfast. This was done during the 1990s and pre the 9/11 terrorists attacks on New York when Americans got first hand experience of what terrorism was all about. It is questionable if a post 9/11 American administration would have been so keen to participate in appeasing terrorism.

In sport

The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League have six divisions.
The Original Six teams in the National Hockey League are Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, New York, Boston, and Detroit. They are the oldest remaining teams in the league, though not necessarily the first six; they comprised the entire league from 1942 to 1967.
In American college football, there are six conferences that automatically qualify for Bowl Championship Series games.
Six-man football is a variant of American or Canadian football, played by smaller schools with insufficient enrollment to field the traditional 11-man (American) or 12-man (Canadian) squad.
In a football (soccer) game each side is allowed a maximum of three substitutes, making six in all.
In ice hockey, six is the number of players per team, including the goaltender, that are on the ice at any one time, excluding penalty situations.
In volleyball, six players from each team on each side play against each other.
In some sports, six goals is known as a double-hat-trick, but is very hard to accomplish. A hat-trick in sport is the achievement of a positive feat three times or more during a game, or other achievements based on threes. The term was first used in 1858 in cricket to describe H H Stephenson’s feat of taking three wickets in three balls. A collection was held for Stephenson, and he was presented with a hat bought with the proceeds. The term was used in print for the first time in 1878 and was eventually adopted by many other sports including association football, water polo, and team handball, but did not become popular in North America until the mid-1940s in the National Hockey League.
In American and Canadian football, a touchdown earns 6 points.
In Australian Rules football, six points are received for a goal.
In cricket there are six balls to an over, and a “six” or “sixer” is a shot in which the ball clears the boundary without bouncing, scoring six runs.
In rugby union, the starting blindside flanker wears jersey number 6. (Some teams use “left” and “right” flankers instead of “openside” and “blindside”, with 6 being worn by the starting left flanker.)
In most rugby league competitions (but not the European Super League, which uses static squad numbering), the jersey number 6 is worn by the starting stand-off half (Southern Hemisphere term) or five-eighth (Northern Hemisphere term).
In football (soccer) AC Milan retired shirt number 6 belonging to their legendary center back and captain Franco Baresi in 1997.

In Britain, Arsenal retired the number 6 shirt after their long serving center back and captain Tony Adams retired in 2002.

In Major League Baseball: the Atlanta Braves, for manager Bobby Cox; the Boston Red Sox, for Johnny Pesky; the Detroit Tigers, for Hall of Famer Al Kaline; the Minnesota Twins, for Tony Oliva; the St. Louis Cardinals, for Hall of Famer Stan Musial; the San Diego Padres, for Steve Garvey.

In the NBA: the Boston Celtics, for Hall of Famer Bill Russell; the Orlando Magic, for their fans (the “sixth man”); the Philadelphia 76ers, for Hall of Famer Julius Erving; the Phoenix Suns, for Walter Davis; the Sacramento Kings, also for their fans.

In the NFL: the Kansas City Chiefs, for Warren McVea.

In the NHL: the Detroit Red Wings, for Larry Aurie; the Pittsburgh Penguins, for Ian Ackerman; the Toronto Maple Leafs, for Hall of Famer Ace Bailey (the Leafs have a unique policy of not retiring numbers unless the player honored either died or suffered a career-ending incident while a member of the team. Bailey suffered a fractured skull during a game in 1933; while he recovered and lived for nearly 60 years after the incident, he never played again. The Leafs would issue the number to Ron Ellis in 1968 at Bailey’s personal request, and Ellis wore it until his own retirement in 1981.)

In NASCAR, the number 6 is currently owned by Roush Fenway Racing. Since the 2007 season, the first year in which Roush Racing was merged with the Fenway Sports Group that owns the Boston Red Sox, the Cup Series version of the car has been driven by David Ragan. From 1988 to 2006, Mark Martin drove the #6 in the Cup Series for what was then Roush Racing.

Cars and Bikes

Yamaha YZF R6
The Yamaha YZF R6 is a super sports bike, motorcycle manufactured by Yamaha Motor Company. The Yamaha comes with many sports bikes that are Yamaha R1, Yamaha FZ8, Yamaha R15 and Yamaha Vmax, Yamaha MT01 and more. The Yamaha YZF R6 is the one of the most advanced production in the 600cc segment from Yamaha. The Yamaha, bike manufacturer is flourishing in the Indian Market with the most stylish and delivers the best and advanced technology in India.

Audi S6
Easily distinguishable by the row of LED running lights that graces both sides of its front bumper, Audi’s sport-inspired version of its A6 executive saloon, the S6, has much more than visual cues to separate it from its little brothers. This four-door, five-passenger luxury sport sedan comes standard with the six-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission with steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters, Audi’s quattro AWD and a 435-hp, 5.2-liter V10 designed by Lamborghini.

Mercedes 600
During the resurgence of Germany from the rubble of WWII, after a tough post-war German automotive industry was recovering, and it was there that Mercedes Benz proposed making the car better representation of the world, whatever the cost. Work began in 1955 and after eight years of development the result was the Mercedes 600, also known as der Großer Mercedes, a car totally superlative in all respects. This was the car of choice of Presidents, Popes, dictators and billionaires.

Mercedes Benz 600 Pullman x3 — Mercedes Benz 600 Pullman

In books, music, television & movies

Six Graves to Munich by Mario Gianluigi Puzo, perhaps better known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola.
Six Days Of The Condor, a thriller novel by James Grady first published in 1974 by W.W. Norton, is a suspense drama set in contemporary Washington, D.C., and is considerably different from the 1975 film version, Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. It was followed by a second novel by Grady titled Shadow of the Condor, released in 1978.

Hexameter is a poetic form consisting of six metrical feet per line.
Six Degrees of Separation is a movie about an affluent New York couple find their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young black man who is never quite who he says he is.
Six Days Seven Nights is a movie starring Harrison Ford and Anne Heche. Robin Monroe, a New York magazine editor, and the gruff pilot Quinn Harris must put aside their mutual dislike if they are to survive after crash landing on a deserted South Seas island.
Six Days in June is a documentary about the Six Day War.
Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis is a movie about a boy who communicates with spirits that don’t know they’re dead seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.

Number 6 (Teresa Palmer) is a character in the movie I Am Number Four (2011).
The Six Million Dollar Man, was an extremely popular sci-fi television series from the 1970s about former astronaut Steve Austin crippled in an airplane crash but rebuilt using bionic components that gave him super-human strength and speed.

The Bionic Six are the heroes of the eponymous animated series.
A group of six musicians is called a sextet.
There are 6 semitones in a tritone.
A standard guitar has 6 strings.
Most woodwind instruments have 6 basic holes or keys (e.g., bassoon, clarinet, pennywhistle, saxophone); these holes or keys are usually not given numbers or letters in the fingering charts.
Les Six (“The Six” in English) was a group consisting of the French composers Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre in the 1920s.
Bands with the number six in their name include Six Organs of Admittance, 6 O’clock Saints, Electric Six, Eve 6, Los Xey (sei is Basque for “six”), Out On Blue Six, Six In Six, Sixpence None the Richer, Slant 6, Vanity 6, and You Me At Six.
#6 is the pseudonym of American musician Shawn Crahan, when performing with the band Slipknot.
“Six geese a-laying” were given as a present on the sixth day in the popular Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.
The concerti grossi Opus 3, organ concertos Opus 4 and Opus 7 (each) by Georg Frideric Handel.
The sixth album by Dream Theater, Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence, was based around the number six: the album has six songs, and the sixth song — that is, the complete second disc — explores the stories of six individuals suffering from various mental illnesses.
Six is the second album by Mansun released in 1998. It takes its name in part from the main character in the television series The Prisoner, and from A. A. Milne’s poetry book, Now We Are Six.
Patrick McGoohan played prisoner number 6 in the mysterious British television series called The Prisoner, catchphrase “I am a man, I am not a number”.

In militaria

Carrier Air Wing Six
Carrier Air Wing Six (CVW-6) was a United States Navy aircraft carrier air wing whose operational history spans from the years prior to World War II to the end of the Cold War, including participating in the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and the Vietnam War.
When the unit was named “Air Group Six” during its time on the Enterprise, it was the Navy’s only carrier-based air group to carry out three complete tours of duty during World War II.
It was based on 15 different carriers during its operational lifetime. The lineage of Carrier Air Wing Six can be traced to the Enterprise Air Group, created on 1 July 1938, which included the following squadrons and aircraft:
Bombing Six (VB-6) — 18 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive bombers
Fighting Six (VF-6) — 18 Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter
Scouting Six (VS-6) — 18 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive bomber
Torpedo Six (VT-6) — 18 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber

Douglas DC-6
The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and transport aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market.
More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military and wildfire control roles.
The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118.

Shenyang F-6
The F-6 was a Chinese copy of the MiG-19S Farmer-C cannon-armed day fighter. From the late 1960s to the final batch in 1971, a total of more than 70 F-6s were reported delivered, equipping six squadrons at 3 bases, for both interceptor and attack duties. Some of the 1971 batch were late production F-6C version, featuring a prominent braking parachute housing at the base of the rudder.
A few FT-6 two-seat trainers also appear to have been supplied. The FT-6 wasn’t certified for production until December 1973, so these examples must have been delivered after this date. It is also reported that 4 F-6 aircraft are fitted with ventral cameras for the reconnaissance role – whether these are export versions of the JZ-6 or local conversions is not known.

Beechcraft T-6 Texan II
Developed from the Pilatus PC-9, the Beechcraft T-6 Texan II is a single-engined turboprop aircraft built by the Raytheon Aircraft Company (now Hawker Beechcraft). The T-6 is used by the United States Air Force for basic pilot training and by the United States Navy for Primary and Intermediate Joint Naval Flight Officer (NFO) and Air Force Combat Systems Officer (CSO) training. It has replaced the Air Force’s T-37B Tweet and is replacing the Navy’s T-34C Turbo Mentor.
The T-6A is also used as a basic trainer by the Royal Canadian Air Force (CT-156 Harvard II), the German Air Force, the Greek Air Force, the Israeli Air Force (Efroni), and the Iraqi Air Force.

AT-6
As well as being an initial trainer, the multirole Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 is capable of performing missions including: net-centric ISR with the ability for precise geo-registration, streaming video and datalinks, light attack including combat search and rescue (CSAR), close air support, forward air control and convoy escort, homeland defense (border security), port security, counter-narcotics operations and civil missions such as disaster area reconnaissance, search and rescue and firefighting. There are tandem HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) controls fore and aft for pilot and instructor.
Hawker Beechcraft showcased the AT-6 at the Royal International Air Tattoo and Farnborough International Airshow in the UK in 2010.

Fiat L6/40
The Fiat L6/40 was a light tank used by the Italian army from 1940 and on through World War II. It was designed by Fiat-Ansaldo as an export product, and was adopted by the Italian Army when officials learned of the design and expressed interest. It was the main tank employed by the Italian forces fighting on the Eastern Front alongside the L6/40-based Semovente 47/32 self-propelled gun. L6/40s were also used in the North African campaign.
The official Italian designation was Carro Armato (“armored tank”) L 6/40. This designation is understood as follows: “L” for Leggero (Italian: “light”), followed by the weight in tons (6) and the year of adoption (1940).

Ordnance QF 6 pounder
The Ordnance Quick-Firing 6-pounder 7 cwt, or just 6 pounder, was a British 57 mm gun, their primary anti-tank gun during the middle of World War II, as well as the main armament for a number of armoured fighting vehicles.
It was first used in North Africa in April 1942, and quickly replaced the 2 pounder in the anti-tank role, allowing the 25 pounder to revert to its intended artillery role.
The United States Army also adopted the 6 pounder as their primary anti-tank gun under the designation 57 mm Gun M1.

The Six Gun
Whilst not actually a firearm as such, the term ‘six gun’ or ‘six shooter’ is a general, if inaccurate, description of a revolver. The original name came from the fact that the majority of the early revolvers had a cylindrical bullet magazine that held six rounds of ammunition.

However, modern revolvers come in a variety of capacities including 5 round, 6 round, 8 round and 10 round. An example being the Smith & Wesson Model 617 is a 10 round capacity .22LR revolver shown below.

Six Million

The Holocaust, also known by the Biblical word Shoah (which means calamity), was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II. Led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, it was part of a program of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany throughout German-occupied territory.
Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed. Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.
Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the term “holocaust” to describe other mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals. Recent estimates based on figures obtained since the fall of the Soviet Union indicates some ten to eleven million civilians and prisoners of war were intentionally murdered by the Nazi regime.
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Various laws to remove the Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nuremberg Laws, were enacted in Germany years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were subjected to slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. The occupiers required Jews and Romani to be confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany’s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar has called “a genocidal state”.
There are numerous Holocaust Memorials throughout the world, including in Jerusalem, Washington, and Berlin, Germany.

However, it was not the German Nazis, but the Croatian Ustase who were responsible for some of the most bloody and sadistic crimes carried out against the Orthodox population in Croatia. Some of their crimes so heinous that they even appalled the Nazis.
The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats massacred and sadistically tortured to death has been estimated at approximately three hundred thousand.
The legacy of the brutality of this genocidal campaign still affects the political situation in that part of Europe.

Think it could never happen again? Don’t be too sure. In 1994 in Rwanda, Africa somewhere in the region of one million people were murdered by the Interahamwe death squads in a genocidal campaign. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for their slaughter. Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools. They were also killed in churches with the collusion of some clergy. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact, namely that their cold-blooded killers were people they knew – neighbors, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.

Finally, other stuff

There are said to be no more than ‘six degrees of separation’ between any two people on Earth.
Extra-sensory perception is sometimes called the ‘sixth sense’.
Six Cardinal Directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down.
The number of sides on a cube, hence the highest number on a standard die.
The highest number on one end of a standard domino.
‘Six’ is used as an informal slang term for the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the one Ian Fleming’s fictious character James Bond works for.
Six is the number of cans of soda or beer in a ‘six-pack’.
A ‘six pack’ refers to the appearance of well developed stomach muscles.
The term ‘six pack’ also refers to the number of fundamental flight instruments lumped together on a cockpit display.
‘Six Flags’ is the name of a series of amusement parks and theme parks.

‘Six of the best’ is a slang term for corporal punishment particularly in schools where the offending pupil was given six slaps with a cane.
A ‘sixer’ is the name of the leader of the smallest group of Cub Scouts, traditionally consisting of six people.
Six is the number of feet below ground level where a coffin is traditionally buried, thus also leading to the phrase ‘six feet under’ meaning that a person, or thing, or concept is dead.
In the ancient Roman calendar, Sextilis was the sixth month. After the Julian reform, June became the sixth month and Sextilis was renamed August.
Sextidi was the sixth day of the decade in the French Revolutionary calendar.
‘L’Hexagone’ is a French nickname for the continental part of Metropolitan France.
A ‘hex nut’ is a nut with six sides, and a hex bolt has a six-sided head.
On most phones, the 6 key is associated with the letters M, N, and O, but on the BlackBerry it is the key for J and K, and on the BlackBerry 8700 series and Curve 8900 with full keyboard, it is the key for F.
The ‘6 meter band’ in amateur radio includes the frequencies from 50 to 54 MHz.
6 is the resin identification code used in recycling to identify polystyrene.
In Astrology, Virgo is the 6th astrological sign of the Zodiac.
There are six dots in a Braille cell.

The Six Dynasties form part of Chinese history.
6 is a lucky number in Chinese culture.
The unit of measurement used for the Great Pyramid was the inch and its sexagesimal multiples. The first multiple is the foot, 12 inches (2×6); and after this the rises are 18 (3 x 6), 24 (4×6), 30 (5 x 6), and 36 (6×6 or one yard).
Natural time-spaces are also based on multiples of six, there are 12 months in a year, a day consists of 24 hours (4 x 6), hours are 60 minutes (6×10), and minutes made up of 60 seconds (6×10).

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number One Hundred 100

November 16, 2012 fasab Factoids, Numbers, Politics, Sport, Uncategorized, Unusual 100, 100 meters sprint, 100th lost sheep, A Hundred Pounds of Clay, Abraham, Admiral Álvaro de Bazán, Aegis combat system, air defence frigates, Air National Guard, aloes, American football field, American savings bonds, American short hundredweight, American treasury bonds, Andrew Jackson, AR-18, Arabs, Armalite, assault rifle, atomic number, Álvaro de Bazán, Bangkok, Basketball, Belgium, benchmark, Benjamin Franklin, Bergmann MP18 submachine gun, blessings, boiling point, Boston, Briareus, Calcium Carbonate, cave, Celsius, centenarians, centennial, Centillion, centipedes, cents, century, Century Plant, Chartered Industries of Singapore, checkers, Chinese dictionary, Cottus, crucifixion, currencies, Cyclopes, Czechoslovakia, dollar, Dryden Flight Research Center, education, Edward Kasner, embalm, England, Epistles, euro, F-100, F-100 Class Frigates, F-100 Super Sabre, fastest man in the world, father, fatherhood, Fermium, Ferrol, finance, First Hundred Days, France, FTSE 100, Gaia & Uranus, galaxy, Gene McDaniels, Genesis, golf course, Googol, grand design, Greece, Gyges, Hecatonchires, hector, Hershey, Hubble Space Telescope, hundred years old, Hundred Years' War, hundred-dollar bill, iceberg, Imperial Army, India, Isaac, Israel, Jamaican, James Sullivan, Japan, Jesus, Jew, Jewish New Year, JF-100, JF-100 Variable Stability Aircraft, Joseph Haydn, Kongo class, light machine gun, Lockheed Martin, Magic Square, Malaysia, mathematics, Mathew, Messier 100, Mexico, Militaria, military, Milton Sirotta, Minneapolis, Misc, Miscellaneous, molecular weight, Monterrey, myrrh, Nambu Arms Manufacturing Company, nasa, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA/ESA, NASDAQ 100, NATO, Navantia, NBA, Nepal, New Testament, New York Knicks, Nicodemus, North Vietnam, Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen class, number, Obadiah, one hundred, one hundred prophets, one hundred years, Par 3, parable, Paul, Penang, pence, Pennsylvania, percentages, Philadelphia Warrior, Polish Draughts, politics, pound sterling, President of the United States, prime numbers, Pythagoreans, radioactive, Random, religion, religious, religious jew, Roman numeral C, Room 100, Rosh Hashana, science, Scrabble, Senators, Shem, Shofar, SI, Singapore Technologies Kinetics, Singaporean army, South Korea's King Sejong the Great class, South Vietnam, Southampton, space, Spanish Navy, spiral galaxy, sport, stock exchange, SU-100, supersonic jet fighter aircraft, Symphony #100 in G Major, T-34-85 tank, tank hunter, Thailand, Thomas Jefferson, Titanic, Type 100 Submachine gun, U S Census, U.S. Navy, Ultimax 100, United Kingdom, United States Air Force, United States Senate, USAF, Usain Bolt, Wilt Chamberlain, world war ii

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Today the number is 100, very popular, much used by almost everyone. Here are some things about 100 that you may know and some you probably don’t.

Enjoy.

100 One Hundred

In Religion

Shem was an hundred years old when he became a father (Genesis 11:10);
Abraham was also one hundred years of age when his son Isaac was born (Gen. 21:5);
Obadiah saved one hundred prophets by hiding them in a cave and feeding them. (I Kings 18.4);
Jesus’ parable of the 100th lost sheep (Matthew 18.12);
Nicodemus brought one hundred pounds of myrrh & aloes to embalm Jesus after his crucifixion (John 19.39);
Paul’s 14 Epistles in the New Testament total one hundred chapters;
There are 100 blasts of the Shofar heard in the service of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year;
A religious Jew is expected to utter at least one hundred blessings daily.

In politics

The United States Senate has 100 Senators, two from each of the 50 States;
“The First Hundred Days” is an arbitrary benchmark of a President of the United States’ performance at the beginning of his or her term.

In mathematics

A Centillion 10303 has 100 groups of three zeros after 1000;
A Googol is the figure 1 followed by 100 zeroes, written 10100. It was invented by Milton Sirotta, the 9-year nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner;
A 10×10 Magic Square has 100 squares with numbers 1-100, each row, column & diagonal adding to 505 with the total sum being 5050;
There are exactly 100 prime numbers whose digits are in strictly ascending order. (e.g. 239, 2357 etc.);
Pythagoreans considered 100 as divinely divine because it is the square (10 x 10) of the divine decad;
The standard SI prefix for a hundred is “hecto-“;
100 is the basis of percentages (per cent meaning “per hundred” in Latin), with 100% being a full amount and representing wholeness, purity, or perfection.

In science

One hundred is the Atomic Number of Fermium, a radioactive rare earth metal;
One hundred is the molecular weight of Calcium Carbonate;
The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius.

In space

Messier 100 is a perfect example of a grand design spiral galaxy, a type of galaxy with prominent and very well-defined spiral arms.
These dusty structures swirl around the galaxy’s nucleus, and are marked by a flurry of star formation activity that dots Messier 100 with bright blue, high-mass stars.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

In Finance

Most of the world’s currencies are divided into 100 sub-units; for example, one dollar or one euro is made up of one hundred cents, and one pound sterling is one hundred pence;
The U.S. hundred-dollar bill (the largest US bill in print) has Benjamin Franklin’s portrait;

American savings bonds of $100 have Thomas Jefferson’s portrait;
American $100 treasury bonds have Andrew Jackson’s portrait;
The FTSE 100, NASDAQ 100, etc., are financial tables of the top companies on the various stock exchanges.

In sport

100 is the number of yards in an American football field (not including the end zones);
100 is the minimum distance in yards for a Par 3 on a golf course;
The 100 meters sprint is the race that brings with it the title of the fastest man in the world. Current holder is Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt;

100 points scored by Wilt Chamberlain is the record number of points scored in one NBA game by a single player in basketball game, achieved when Philadelphia Warrior defeated New York Knicks 169-147 on March 2, 1962 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The 316 points by both teams surpassed the record of 312 when Boston defeated Minneapolis 173-139 on Feb. 27, 1959 in Boston.

In militaria

The Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between France & England lasted 116 years.

Ultimax 100
The Ultimax 100 is a squad automatic weapon / light machine gun. It was created by the small arms design team at Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS; now Singapore Technologies Kinetics) Inc, that included American small arms designer James Sullivan, who previously worked for Armalite and participated in design of the AR-18 assault rifle. In 1982 it was adopted by the Singaporean army. The current production version is Ultimax 100 Mark 3.

Type 100 Submachine Gun
Designed and built by the Nambu Arms Manufacturing Company in Japan, the Type 100 Submachine gun was used during World War II, and the only submachine gun produced by Japan in any quantity. It was modeled on the famous Bergmann MP18 submachine gun. First samples were delivered to the Imperial Army in 1942 and in total some 30,000 were manufactured.

F-100
The North American F-100 Super Sabre was a supersonic jet fighter aircraft that served with the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1954 to 1971 and with the Air National Guard (ANG) until 1979.
The first of the Century Series collection of USAF jet fighters, it was the first USAF fighter capable of supersonic speed in level flight.
The F-100 was originally designed by North American Aviation as a higher performance follow-on to the F-86 Sabre air superiority fighter.
Adapted as a fighter bomber, the F-100 would be supplanted by the Mach 2 class F-105 Thunderchief for strike missions over North Vietnam. The F-100 flew extensively over South Vietnam as the Air Force’s primary close air support jet until replaced by the more efficient subsonic LTV A-7 Corsair II.
The F-100 also served in other NATO air forces and with other U.S. allies. In its later life, it was often referred to as “the Hun,” a shortened version of “one hundred.
This aircraft is now on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

JF-100
NASA’s JF-100 Variable Stability Aircraft is a research aircraft about which very little information is readily available. Only scattered references of it remain in bits of documents and reports.
The JF-100 was built from an Air Force F-100C by NASA’s Ames Research Center, and transferred to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in 1960. The “J” designation refers to it being modified for special test missions, but not so extensively that it could not be returned to being a standard F-100. The aircraft obviously was acquired from the Air Force and carried the registration number 53-1709, but no information about its earlier career was available.
The JF-100 was removed from service as a variable stability aircraft at NASA Dryden in 1964, but its final disposition could not be determined. The information is most likely buried in various reports somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered by a future researcher.

F100 class frigates
The Álvaro de Bazán class (also known as the F100 class of frigates) are a new class of Aegis combat system-equipped air defence frigates entering service with the Spanish Navy. They are being built in the Spanish factory of Navantia in Ferrol and are named after Admiral Álvaro de Bazán.
The ships are fitted with American Aegis weapons technology allowing them to track hundreds of airborne targets simultaneously as part of its air defence network. The F100 Alvaro de Bazan class multi-role frigate is one of the few non-US warships to carry the Aegis Combat System and its associated AN/SPY-1 radar. Japan’s Kongo class, South Korea’s King Sejong the Great class, the F100-derived Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen class of frigates also use the Aegis system. Lockheed Martin, Navantia and the U.S. Navy are conducting final systems integration.

Spanish Navy F 100 Class Frigate, Almirante Juan de Borbon

SU-100
Designed on the chasis of the T-34-85 tank, the tank hunter SU-100 was produced until March 1946 with a total number of 3037 units made.
It was one of the most effective anti-tank units up to 1948. In 1960, the SU-100 was upgraded with the installation of a new enhanced B2-34M engine, fuel pump NK-10, air cleaners VTI-3, commander observation equipment TPKU-2B and driver’s night sight BVN, as well as radio sets 10RT-26E and TPU-47.
The SU-100 was produced in Czechoslovakia and was in the inventory of several African and Middle East countries. The Arabs actively used it in military conflicts with Israel.

Other stuff
Cities located at 100 degree longitude: Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Monterrey, Mexico;
Hecatonchires were giants with 100 arms and 50 heads each. They were born of Gaia & Uranus, and were stronger than even the Cyclopes. Their names were Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges;
Gene McDaniels’ song A Hundred Pounds of Clay had highest hit #3 in 1961 Pop Charts;
Joseph Haydn’s Symphony #100 in G Major is called “Military” (composed 1793-94);
Room 100 is a 4-member male melodic rock band formed in 1982;
Gathering of the 100 Gods occurs on the 19th day of the first lunar month;
The first Chinese dictionary was written in 100 A.D.;
The 100th day of the year (non-leap year) is April 10;
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, and hit the iceberg on 4-15-1912;
The Century Plant is a Mexican agave (Agave americana) that blooms only once every “100 years” (folklore). In reality, it takes 10 years to bloom in warm regions and up to 60 years in colder climates;
Centipedes are insects with “100 legs”;
A Centenarian is someone over 100 years old. The number of Centenarians in the US increased from 37,306 (1990) to 50,454 (2000) according to the U.S. Census; the 180,000 centenarians worldwide (2000) is projected to reach 3.2 million by 2050;
Polish Draughts is a 100-square board game played with 40 pieces. It is similar to the 64-square board game of Checkers;
Roman numeral for 100 is C;
Centennial is a 100th anniversary or its celebration;
A Century is a period of 100 years;
When a TV series reaches 100 episodes, it is generally considered viable for syndication;
There are100 tiles in a standard Scrabble set;
In Greece, India, Israel and Nepal, 100 is the police telephone number;
In Belgium, 100 is the ambulance and firefighter telephone number;
In United Kingdom, 100 is the operator telephone number;
There are 100 pounds in an American short hundredweight.

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It’s More Moronic Madness, Yes, It’s Quiz Show Monday!

November 12, 2012 fasab comedy, Humour, Quiz Show Answers, tv, Uncategorized, Unusual "the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes.", Africa, Al Gore, American coin, apartment, behind, Boston, buffalo, Bunraku, Comedy, Corncob pipe, corridors of power, craps, doctor, easy 10, Elizabeth II, Entertainment, Europe, eye ailment, fool, fools, Franklin D Roosevelt, Frosty the Snowman, funny, Futurism, George Bernard Shaw, Humor, Humour, I can make it anywhere, I-90 West, Idaho, idiot, idiots, If I can make it there, isha, Japanese, Jim Beam, Kebert Xela, Klingon, Lady Godiva, Little Brewster Island, man from nantucket, marriage, Martin Van Buren, Massachusetts, Modernism, moron, morons, myopia, No. 10, nursery rhyme, Pastism, Paul III, People, permanent members, Phoenix, pope, Presentism, President, questions, quiz, quiz show, quiz show answers, quiz shows, Random, schoolhouse, shita, silly answers, stupid, stupid answers, stupid people, stupidity, SUV, television, The Lion King, There once was a man from Nantucket, Timon puppet, Tony Blair, Tour de France, tv, two continents, UN Security Council, Vice President, Wallace, Welsh

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

So how many idiots got elected last week? Not all of them I hope, but I bet there are at least a few intellectually challenged newbees in the corridors of power in Washington.

On the lighter side, some of those who didn’t make it in politics made it on to television and appeared in quiz shows.

The results are not that much different to some of the dumb things said in Congress (oh, oh, I feel another post forming in my head) so here is a selection to get the week started with a smile.

Enjoy!

Q: In craps, what are the numbers you will need to roll an ‘Easy 10’?

A: What are 9 and 1?

. 111111

Q: Paul III roared at him, “I have waited 30 years for your services. Now, I’m pope. Can’t I satisfy my desire?”

A: Who is Lady Godiva?

Q: If a Japanese “isha” (doctor) asks you to stick out your “shita”, he means this.

A: What is your behind?

Q: To get to Wallace, Idaho from Boston, get on I-90 West, and the first one of these you ‘hit’, you’re there.

A: What is a buffalo?

Q: 2 of the 3 countries classified as extending across two continents

A: What are Africa and Europe?

Q: The original one of these on Massachusetts’ Little Brewster Island was built in 1716; automation didn’t come until 1998.

A: What is Kebert Xela?

Q: [The language that this statement, meaning “I love you guys”, is in:] Yr Wyf I’n Dy Garu Di

A: What is Klingon?

A: What is Welsh?

Q: He is the only sitting Vice President since Martin Van Buren to be elected President

A: Who is Al Gore?

Q: This nursery rhyme was based on actual events at a 1900 schoolhouse.

A: What is ‘There once was a man from Nantucket?’

Q: In 2002, an elaborate dinner party was held at No. 10 to celebrate this many years’ reign by Elizabeth II

A: Who is Tony Blair?

Q: The Timon puppet in “The Lion King” was inspired by Bunraku, the traditional puppet theatre of this country

A: What is Africa?

Q: Of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, the one that is smallest in size

A: What is my apartment?

Q: George Bernard Shaw called this condition “the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes.”

A: What is marriage?

Q: Of Pastism, Presentism or Futurism, the literary movement that began around 1909

A: What is Modernism?

Q: According to the old saying, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for…” what?

A: Jim Beam

Q: Franklin D. Roosevelt is found on the head side of what American coin?

A: $50 Bill

Q: “If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.” What city does that describe?

A: Phoenix

Q: What was the magical item that brought Frosty the Snowman to life?

A: Corncob pipe

Q: What vehicle is used in the Tour de France race?

A: SUVs

Q: What eye ailment is the more common name for “myopia?”

A: You think you’re right

A myopic video

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